


Stars Crossed

by josephina_x



Category: Smallville
Genre: (...magic? maybe), (and Clark looks at least 18 anyway dammit Smallville stop doing this to me), (except nobody actually knows Clark's real age because he's adopted), (underage tag because this is Season 1 and Clark is 14 or 15 and Lex is 21), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bad Parenting, Lionel is a dick, Lionel's A+ Parenting, Multi, Sexual Confusion, Sexual Identity, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-04-28 21:42:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5106737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where soulmarks are common, two unique individuals meet for the second time... and <i>still</i> manage to muck things up for each other. (A Clexian soulmates AU.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Stars Crossed  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com)  
> Fandom: Smallville  
> Pairing: Clark + Lex (pre-Clex)  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Spoilers: general for early seasons  
> Word count: ???+  
> Summary: In a world where soulmarks are common, two unique individuals meet for the second time... and _still_ manage to muck things up for each other. (A Clexian soulmates AU.)  
>  Warnings: Un-beta'd.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.  
> Comments: Yes, please! :)  
> Author's Note: I'm playing around with the soulmates trope, that thing with the name and/or first words a person's soulmate says to them (in person) written on their arm or some-such.
> 
> Clark gets " _I could've sworn I hit you._ " written in a beautiful flowing cursive script on the inside of his right wrist.
> 
> Lex gets " _If you did, I'd be-- I'd be dead._ " ...in Kryptonian.
> 
> This, uh, may explain some parts of canon better than one may think...
> 
> (...by which I mean that this AU may actually explain pieces of canon better than canon. Your mileage may vary.)
> 
> Technically, this also fits my Clexmas 2015 Bingo card for the "reunions" prompt. _Tech_ -ni-cally. ;)

~*~*~*~*~*~

It didn't occur to Clark until after he'd gotten home that he'd just met his soulmate.

Might have. Maybe.

He practically ran over his dad rushing up to the barn loft -- his "fortress of solitude" -- for some privacy, and he almost ripped shirt fabric as he unbuttoned his sleeve cuff and shoved it up his arm.

There it was, same as always...

_I could've sworn I hit you._

...in lovely, flowing cursive, written at a slant. In purple. Left-hand dominant.

Clark let go of his shirtsleeve and dropped down onto the couch, letting out a long breath.

A guy.

His soulmate was a _guy_.

\--An _older_ guy, older than him, which was even weirder.

He'd gotten his soulmark, appeared out of nowhere, when he was four, a little more than a year after he'd been adopted. So his parents had known it was the real thing, and not just some fake tattoo somebody had put on him.

His dad had been worried sick. His mother had laughed a bit and said it was just proof that Clark had a generous heart, was likely going to grow up to be a policeman or rescue worker or something, saving people.

Clark had gotten his soulmark, trailing around his right wrist like an closed, infinitely-looping circlet of near-doom, written by fate and averted by destiny, when he'd been four years old. So shouldn't his soulmate be four years _younger_ than him?

...

\--What kind of guy liked purple as his favorite color, anyway? The words had started out that color, and _never changed_! And his writing was really girly too!

And he was bald! Why the heck was he bald? Who was bald and liked purple that much?

...Lex Luthor, maybe?

Seriously though, what the--!?

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex absently twined the fingers of his left hand around his right wrist, rubbing them against the simple leather band, stroking the flat glass surface that kept safe the fragile hands of the watchface and the Napoleon Franc underneath.

A simple, old and well-worn watch. Worthless, except for the history of its gifting to him by his mother, the sentimental value to him, worn in remembrance of her stubborn vitality from before she had died.

All of which held a secret even more dear to him underneath.

He'd struggled with it for years. It still made no sense.

The soulmark -- his soulmark -- had appeared on his right wrist on the morning of his sixth birthday.

It had been completely illegible. Strange blocky lines and geometric symbols. Pure and utter nonsense.

His father had bent over him and looked down on it with curiosity. His mother had thought it a joke in poor taste, and tried valiantly to scrub away what she'd thought had been magic marker off of his wrist.

It hadn't come off.

His father had chuckled and taken a picture of it, and, for awhile, that had been that. They'd all gone back to living their lives, mostly in-synch, as a family.

But Lex's father had gone sharp-eyed one day, watching Lex like he was _waiting_ for something to happen. His father had also started watching all of Lex's friends, Lex had found out later, over time. His father had been looking for something in those other children, and when he didn't find it, he'd found ways to remove those proto-friends and playmates from Lex's life.

In one case, his father had been so angry about not finding whatever he was not seeing that he'd killed the child's parents. That had caused no end of problems for Lex when he ran into Oliver Queen again, back at Excelsior Prep.

After awhile, Lex had just about resigned himself to loneliness; even if he found someone who could be a friend, his father would either disapprove of them and remove them, or corrupt them. Or they'd die and leave him feeling empty, angry, and bereft. Lonely, again.

Things had been bad enough when he'd been younger, but they'd just ended up a different kind of bad, later. Before, his mother and father had gotten into all sorts of fights, and his father had always acted weird, an odd kind of manic, after every one of those astronomy meetings.

And the day that his father had taken him to that small town outside of Metropolis when his life had changed forever, his father had been at his most energetic, most demanding, most _crazy_ , really -- his father had put his foot down and _made_ Lex come along with him on that factory-acquisition trip, despite his mother's strong protests.

But whatever his father had expected to happen that day, in that town, what had happened to the town -- and Lex -- obviously hadn't been it.

After the meteor shower, things had changed. Lionel had been angry for awhile -- with him, with others -- and nearly whipped himself up into a frenzy over something, whatever it was. But after the aftermath, Lionel had all-but-disowned him. He grew cold and distant. He'd had no time or patience for Lex, anymore, less than he'd ever had.

Somehow, Lex had become no longer worthy of his interest, let alone his concern, or love. For awhile, Lex had desperately tried to make it up to him, somehow, to make things right for whatever he'd done wrong, to try and get back in his father's good graces, to earn back what little he'd had that he'd lost. For a long time after that, Lex had thought his father's derision was because of his baldness, that there was nothing he could do about it, to fix things; he'd despaired and given up on anything but trying to be a good son to his mother.

It hadn't been until much later, after his mother had died, that Lex had realized that the real reason Lionel had stopped investing his time and effort into raising him was because he'd decided that Lex was no longer _useful_ to him. And, if he wanted his father back, he could only try to get him back by improving in other ways, and hope Lionel would eventually forgive him if he did something extraordinary enough in the future to merit Lionel's love once again, or at least his respect.

Nothing had worked. The extent of Lionel's involvement in Lex's life had been that he'd sometimes bring people into Lex's little sphere of influence, and just _watch_. Then he'd do the same thing that he'd done before with anyone Lex had met, who hadn't met Lionel's unspoken criteria: remove them from Lex's life once again.

Lex hadn't realized what was going on until later, much later. When he had, it had infuriated him.

His father was trying to find Lex's soulmate before he did.

He knew what Lex's soulmark looked like. He had some criteria he was going by, to try and figure out who it was -- god only knew for what purpose.

When he'd been younger, Lex had thought up all sorts of strange and wonderful daydreams that would explain his odd soulmate's writing: s/he was royalty from a far-off aboriginal tribe (...or Themiscyra maybe?); s/he was an artist left speechless at his first words to her/im; s/he was a modern-day da Vinci with her/is own made-up language of cryptographic ciphers.

When Lex gave up on just waiting -- around the time his mother died and his father began actively hating him -- and he started trying to figure out how to read the blasted symbols himself, he'd only grown more infuriated. Nothing he found historically matched. It sure as hell wasn't ancient Greek.

His imagination went even a little more wild, a little farther skewed: s/he was a descendant of an age-old civilization lost to humanity -- Atlantis, Egypt, the Celtic isles of Avalon; s/he was a mute mathematical genius-savant that could only communicate through pictograms; s/he and her/is parents were fans of Warrior Angel even more than he was, so much so that in their eccentric manner they made up their own eclectic alien language for the fun of it and conversed in it in exclusivity.

When Lex knew a bit more about what language his soulmark _wasn't_ and _couldn't be_ , and then realized what all those "astronomy club" meetings implied about his father's sanity, he laughed himself sick over that last one.

He stopped laughing when he learned a little more about human brain structure and how that translated into human language forms, and started seriously considering the possibility of aliens from other worlds actually existing. Then he just about threw up over the possibility of said aliens visiting Earth anytime soon, because his father was really the last person anyone should want to be the one making an impression on impressionable young alien visitors to their little corner of the galaxy.

For one thing, Lionel would most certainly scare his soulmate right off the planet straightaway, and Lex couldn't have that, now, could he?

Plus, his luck being what it was, after meeting Lionel, his alien-soulmate's parents would likely bombard the planet's surface and get them both caught up in the middle of another meteor shower or two -- and with good reason. (Some days, Lex didn't doubt he wouldn't mind a couple large rocks dropping onto his father's head from above... so long as he himself was out of the line of fire, this time.)

When Lex gave up searching for the _language_ of the soulmark and started seriously researching soulmarks _themselves_ , he found himself understanding exactly why his mother had tried to scrub the damned thing off of his arm: every known instance of a soulmark always, and only, appeared when the receiver of the soulmark could understand the language in which it was written. No exceptions. ...Prior to him.

Some days, Lex got really tired of being unique.

Apparently, they had language schools exclusively set up for the soulmarkless to try and learn as many languages as possible, to make that mark show up. By the time Lex discovered this information, he was already fluent in thirteen languages, conversant in another twenty-four, and could recognize over two-hundred-and-thirty-seven written forms of languages or variants-of-languages on-sight. None of those languages, living or dead, even came close to matching the blocky geometric text on his arm.

Lex considered enrolling in a few courses anyway, just in case, until he realized that they didn't even cover ancient Greek (which he already knew), despite Themiscyra having a perfectly viable population of soulmarked individuals still speaking said language that one also ought to be trying to match outsiders to.

A soulmark generally appeared on a person's right wrist when their soulmate was born; at birth when the newborn's soulmate was already alive. It was just as likely to appear at puberty, however, when the person receiving the mark began to express sexual interest in others. There was a strong correlation for those with soulmarks appearing at puberty not connecting as well with their soulmates outside of a sexual relationship; people didn't really like to talk about it, though, for obvious reasons.

Frankly, Lex felt that such people must necessarily be very shallow individuals, to be able to solve every problem in their soulmate relationship with sex, sex, and more sex. ...Then again, if both soulmates were equally shallow, then maybe it really did work out for them.

Less-depressingly, Lex figured that since he had received his soulmark early-on, well before puberty, that his soulmate was likely on the same mental wavelength as he himself was, and vice-versa.

A soulmark could change language, though not the meaning of the text, if a soulmate's primary language shifted over the course of their life. It was a _very_ rare occurrence, though Lex had had high hopes for awhile. Confused, and then irritated, Lex had stopped watching his soulmark and started covering it up and keeping it covered.

\--He'd stopped looking at it when he couldn't take the near-psychedelic color changes the blasted thing underwent anymore. More regularly, a soulmark would change color when a soulmate's color preferences changed. Lex hadn't really known what to think, when the color of his soulmark changed every other week, or month. On one memorable occasion, it had changed color four times over the course of an hour. Not shades of a color -- full colors.

And then there had been that time that the soulmark had turned half one color, and half another -- red, and blue. And not "half" like "I changed my mind halfway through writing," either -- the top half of all the pictograms were red, and the bottom halves were blue. What kind of person was so indecisive that they couldn't even choose a favorite color, really? It wouldn't have been so bad, if it hadn't seemed to get stuck that way.

Yes, red and blue made purple in pigment, but that wasn't really the same thing. Worse, he'd thought it was 'neat', maybe even 'cute', for all of two embarrassingly-long seconds. Up until then, he'd actually still been proud of the damned thing, despite transient feelings that came and went that left him sort of unsure and tentative about it at times. He had a unique soulmark, after all, and obviously whoever his soulmate was was going to be a very interesting person to know -- and, more importantly, they were going to be **all his**. So he'd been nothing but intrigued by this odd new thing about his mark.

Then he'd looked up and noticed the stares he was getting from his classmates over the dual-color mark, and felt more than a little uncomfortable about it for the first time in the presence of people other than Lionel. _Acutely_ uncomfortable.

He'd snuck off to the school library and done some emergency research later the same day, and found out that nobody had ever had a soulmark that was more than one color at a time -- another first -- and it had just cemented his status as a freak, the final nail in the coffin of his already-ignominious social status at Excelsior Prep.

Written in a language that Lex couldn't understand, in two primary colors that combined to match his own. An enigma and a puzzle all in one -- that was what he was looking for, according to his soulmark.

Honestly, whenever he managed to meet his soulmate, they'd have a hell of a lot of explaining to do.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It occurred to Clark later that evening, as he sat down for dinner with his parents, that the first words he'd said to his soulmate had been a lie.

He dropped his fork.

And he held his head in his hands, refusing to answer his parents when they asked after him in concern, as the realization really hit him.

The first words he'd ever said to his _soulmate_ had been a _lie_.

Now and forever, whenever his soulmate looked down at his wrist, he would see a lie instead of the truth. He would know that Clark had not trusted him, not really, right from the start, and if he'd lied once, what would keep him from doing it again?

Clark had promised himself for years that when he met his soulmate, he'd tell them everything. Always. They'd be the one person he would never have to lie to.

Sometimes, that thought -- that _promise_ , that he'd made to both them and himself -- had been the only thing that had kept him going, in the face of all the lies he'd had to tell, and secrets he'd had to keep: the truth that there was one person out there, who was there just for him. One person that he could be completely open and honest with, who was his soulmate, really and truly. One person who would love him despite his being a complete freak, who his biological parents had hated so much that they'd just tossed him away. Just one person. He only needed one. He'd be happy with one.

And now he'd ruined _everything_. Every single time he looked at his wrist, from now on, he'd look at those words and _remember_...

He was an untrustworthy _**LIAR**_.

Clark didn't remember leaving the kitchen table, or running up to his room. He just collapsed face-first onto his bed, trying not to _scream_.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex stroked his fingers over the watchband again. A soulmark wasn't the only way to tell when one found one's soulmate, though. There were other signs.

The first exchange of words matching the other's soulmark -- that was the most common sign. That wasn't, however, the first.

The first meeting didn't always coincide with the first exchange of words. A one-sided exchange also didn't seem to 'count', according to research. Meetings between soulmates, however, tended to _always_ induce the same handful of symptoms every single time, at the start of the relationship.

Chief among them being a feeling of breathlessness when eyes met, a feeling of deep calm leading up to frissioning excitement, and a strong draw -- almost a physical _pull_ \-- to want to spend more time with the person.

Lex had felt all three of those things that afternoon, when he'd first stared up at Clark Kent.

...Granted, he'd just been pulled out of a river after having drowned and only started breathing again thanks to his gorgeous yet unlikely savior, but still. There was at least a _possibility_ that it might be him, right? That young man who... _didn't_ look six years younger than him, who spoke _English_ fluently, and who _hadn't_ rushed to declare that, wasn't that odd, Lex had just said what was written around his wrist, imagine that?

...Yeah, right. _Sure_ it was him.

Lex collapsed down on the dust-covered couch in his library and stared up at the ceiling, feeling absolutely miserable. He lay there, unmoving, for a long time, long enough for the sky to turn sunset-colored.

...Maybe red and blue were his favorite colors. He was wearing blue jeans, right? That was blue.

And wasn't there a native american tribe in the area? Sure, he spoke English just fine, but maybe he was bilingual.

Hell, maybe tan was his favorite color now, like his jacket, and the pictograms shifted to something actually intelligible. Tan and blue, and a phrase in proper English. It had been a while since he'd last looked at his soulmark, hadn't it? _Years._ Not since he'd started college, and really given up on meaningful and lasting relationships.

Lex raised his right hand up in front of his face, staring at his watch. He slowly spidered his fingers along the watch band towards the clasp.

He pulled in a breath, and unclasped it.

The watch fell to his chest.

A thin, narrow flesh-colored strip of cloth stared back down at him.

He moved his fingers forward to tug it off of his wrist, to look.

And stopped when he realized his hands were shaking.

Soulbonds didn't always work out so well, Lex knew. His parents had been soulmates. That hadn't stopped them from being horrible to each other. Soulmarks didn't mean happily-ever-after; it just meant they _matched_.

And what kind of person would match _him_?

He closed his eyes and let both hands fall back to his chest.

 _Such_ a coward. Oliver was right.

He raised fingers to his wrist in a thoughtless nervous reaction, touched cloth instead of his absent watchband, stopped, then lifted his hand higher and rubbed his fingers against his eyelids instead.

...Maybe he should just stick with giving the man a truck. And get really, really drunk. And try to forget about soulmates and all of this nonsense.

Really, _really_ drunk.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: ...And I bet for a second there you people thought that in this AU Lex might actually catch something of a break here, what with the whole mutual-soulmark thing going on, and all. To which I say: Hah! --'Hah!', I say! Hah! :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Okay, so I'm not actually going to be **that** mean to the guys, as I may have indicated last author's note. ...Well, no, actually, yes I am, because it's fun, but whatever. Sorry-not-sorry :-P ;)

~*~*~*~*~*~

When Clark got up the next morning, he wasn't in the greatest of moods, but when he went downstairs and saw the truck sitting outside, it improved _a lot_.

Then fell like a rock.

Should've known better; his parents couldn't afford a new truck for him. And if Lex Luthor had been the one to send it...

There was no way it was him. A soulmate wouldn't send him a _truck_. He'd come over and talk to Clark himself.

Clark had pretty much figured, for a long time, that he was going to be stuck finding his soulmate upon avoiding a large piece of furniture tumbling down a staircase towards him, or dodging a bullet with his name on it, at some point in the future. At best he'd thought it might be some moving accident. (...but shouldn't a person's first words be an 'Oh my god, I'm sorry!' or 'Are you okay?' if that was the case?) And if it wasn't an accident, what kind of person would be _trying_ to hurt him, anyway? --Some kind of criminal. And god knows, the amount of time Clark had already spent thinking about that ending punctuation over the years was just sad: what the difference between a period and an exclamation point might mean, and all the possible inflections that might go along with it. _All_ the possible meanings.

Even with the lecture his dad had given him about Luthors being the root of all evil or whatever, Clark couldn't help but wish that maybe it really was Mr. Luthor who was his soulmate, even if he was older. And richer. And Clark had lied to him first-thing.

Lex hitting him _had_ been an accident, not hatefully on purpose; Clark had seen it, turning around at the sound of screeching brakes. Lex had tried to avoid him, looking panicked; he hadn't been trying to hurt him. Just like Clark hadn't meant to lie; it had just slipped out, saying what he was supposed to say like always. Wouldn't that be so much better than being soulmates with somebody that careless, or who might really have been wanting to hurt him?

He definitely couldn't tell his parents, though. Dad had always been adamant about meeting whoever turned out to be Clark's soulmate and grilling them, hard. He wasn't about to let Clark be abused by some asshole who'd just tried to hit him and _missed_.

Which was something that Clark had always had mixed feelings on, though they'd generally, usually included relief. Except now...

...His dad already didn't like Lex. And Clark hadn't even told his mom or dad that Lex had actually hit him with his car, yet. He'd been too dazed and out of it before, with the shock and then the whole soulmark thing, and then too freaked out about it later, because who the heck was _carproof_? What was _wrong_ with him? Sure, he knew he wasn't normal, but there was not normal, and then there was _not normal_!

Telling his parents now would pretty much be the worst thing ever. They knew what his soulmark said. His mom might only worry over him, wanting to be sure he was really okay and not hurt, but the first thing his _dad_ would think of was the fact that he'd been _hit_ , and there was no way he wouldn't demand to know whether Lex had said what was written there -- whether Lex was at all aware of any part of Clark's secret, what he could do.

Which apparently extended to being able to be hit by a moving car at over sixty miles-an-hour.

One thing for sure: if Clark told dad that he thought Lex Luthor was his soulmate, he'd never see Lex again. His dad would probably try and make up some malarkey excuse about Lex's words only coincidentally being the same as what he had on his arm, or who-knew-what, and how it was for his own good that Clark stay away from him completely... and never let him off the farm again.

It wasn't like false alarms didn't happen sometimes -- heck, it had happened with his dad and Lana's Aunt Nell. They'd both had the generic 'hi's and 'hello's that people who didn't worry much about the whole soulmates thing had, and they'd been careful about it, laughed about it sometimes, even. They'd not gotten together until high school, when they'd been pretty sure about it. They'd been good together, really good... up until his dad had met his mom when they'd been at college, and the words written on _her_ wrist had removed all doubt.

Nell and his dad had been good. His mom and dad had been better. And if that hadn't been enough, his dad had obviously been smitten. It had been honest-to-god love-at-first-sight, apparently.

Nell hadn't exactly taken it well. --Still didn't, in fact. And it didn't exactly help that there were still people in town who thought his dad and Nell should be together, to this day.

His dad and mom weren't among them, though, which was kind of a relief for Clark, on multiple levels. For one thing, he couldn't imagine being adopted with Nell as a mother to him. She wasn't mom material, in Clark's vaunted opinion; she was barely an aunt to Lana. Worse, Nell and his dad being together would have made Lana his sister. And Clark couldn't see Nell or Lana treating a freak like him like family; he probably would've been returned to the adoption agency after the first few days like a bad egg.

...Heck, if his dad and Nell had stayed together, he probably wouldn't have gotten adopted to begin with. His mom was the one who couldn't have kids; Nell didn't have that problem. Assuming the doctors she'd had check her out hadn't been lying, anyway. She'd sunk pretty low for awhile there, trying to get his dad back. It had gotten so bad that Clark had heard the stories around town about it years later, long after he'd been adopted.

Clark really loved his mom and dad, and he was very grateful to the both of them, to have them as his parents. He was even luckier that they loved him back.

But that didn't mean that he told them everything.

If Lex really was his soulmate, though...

...Well, he had to return the truck anyway, didn't he?

Clark sighed and shouldered his backpack. He was really looking forward to having somebody who knew all of his secrets, someday.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark was starting to get the feeling that 'almost getting hit by things' might be a cornerstone of his relationship with his soulmate.

That, or fate had a really sick sense of humor or something.

He edged away from the fencing foil lodged in the doorframe next to his face, and took the startled and not-quite sheepish "Clark, I didn't see you there!" in stride.

He managed a weak smile, and tried to think of a way he could bring up 'soulmates' without completely giving himself away by accident. In case he was wrong. Because giving away his secrets to someone who wasn't his soulmate would be a disaster.

...Oh god, what had he been thinking, coming here?

He felt himself go a little pale, and he saw Lex come to a halt, about an arm's length from touching his shoulder... and hesitate.

Then Lex moved past him, retrieved his sword from the wall, and soon enough they were both sitting over in front of the fireplace, currently unlit. ...Not that Clark needed a fire to feel like his face was about two seconds from bursting into flames from sheer embarrassment.

Because it was what his dad had sent him over for, and his excuse, Clark got down to trying to explain how he couldn't keep the truck -- leaving out how he did-but-didn't want it, because he'd rather have his soulmate instead -- and by the time he'd gotten through explaining that, _no_ , the color _wasn't_ the problem, he liked red just fine, thanks, he was more-or-less convinced that Lex just _couldn't_ be it.

Up until Lex muttered, "Should I've had the racing stripe done up in blue?" at which point Clark's jaw dropped.

"Wh-what?" Clark all-but-squeaked.

"Granted, that would have been an extra day, and I thought you might've wanted it sooner," Lex continued on. "I would've had to have it done custom -- they don't do red with blue stripes, or blue with red stripes, at the dealership, just white. I made the ribbon blue, though."

Clark felt his mouth moving, but no sound was coming out.

"Or would you really like a half-and-half paintjob?" Lex asked breezily. "Red and blue are your favorites, aren't they?"

It was then that Clark realized that Lex was, and had been, watching him sidelong the entire time he'd been talking about the colors of the truck. ...Gauging his reaction?

Clark snapped his mouth shut, caught himself, then straightened and said accusingly, "Is this some kind of joke?!"

Lex blinked at him.

"Who _told_ you!" Clark demanded, clutching at his wrist defensively. "This isn't funny!" Because Clark had stopped telling Pete that he liked both colors back in third grade, when he'd gotten razzed on by his first best friend on it. 'Just pick one!' and how he was just gonna confuse the heck out of his soulmate, because how would the mark even show up if he didn't have a single favorite color? Pete had teased him mercilessly, on how the thing would probably be transparent on the other person's wrist, or not written at all, if he couldn't decide and pick just one.

Pete wouldn't help a Luthor out on anything, though, not even a messed-up prank on Clark, so it couldn't've been him. ...Had somebody else overheard and said something?

"No one told me," said Lex, and no, that just did not fly!

Clark opened his mouth to read him the riot act--

"Except you."

\--and snapped it shut again, and glared, before hotly proclaiming, "I did not!"

Lex cocked his head at him, was looking at him with no small amusement, and that kind of set Clark off.

"Red and blue aren't my favorite colors, anyway!" Clark protested, rocking back and wrapping his arms around his chest defensively. "It's red and blue _both_ , not one or the other!"

Lex's eyebrows went up and stayed up. "It's... red and blue _together_?" he said, almost musingly, looking off into the distance while rubbing at his watchband, which was on his right wrist. "So, 'red and blue' is your favorite color -- singular, not plural; either one alone isn't enough? I'd wondered." Then Lex did something completely unexpected -- he turned his head back towards Clark and smiled at him. "Do you know, I'd never considered that. How did you come to that decision?" he asked of him.

Clark was flabbergasted enough by this to say, "Rainbow pencils."

Lex blinked at him. "Rainbow pencils?"

"It's..." _Oh, geez._ "They're colored pencils that have all the primary colors in the middle," Clark said, shoulders dropping -- and if he hadn't felt completely embarrassed before, he sure did now, especially at having to explain it. "If you draw on one side, you get one, maybe two colors. If you don't sharpen it very well, and draw holding it straight up..." He looked away, feeling his face heat up again. "It belonged to a friend, and she let me try writing with it one time in art class. I thought it was cool, but it was way too many colors, so I tried using rubber bands to tie together regular colored pencils for things, and I liked red and blue the best."

Lex got a small furrow between his eyebrows. "Did that actually work?" he said, finally. "Tying them together?"

...That was his question? Really? Clark sighed. "I had a penknife to sharpen the pencils; I just cut them in half -- uh, longways -- and then shoved them together in the middle. Sort of like making one pencil." He made a slight face as he remembered how much trouble he'd gotten in with the teacher for doing that, too.

Lex nodded almost absently. "I don't suppose that, mm, about three and a half weeks earlier in art class might also have been the first time you got to play around with a rather more diverse set of colors than usual?"

Clark frowned, because that hadn't exactly sounded like a question. And when he thought about it... "Uh, yeah. Why?" Clark asked, feeling a little nonplussed.

"No reason," Lex said lightly, with a small smile. He was still lightly running his fingers over his watchband.

Clark suddenly got it.

Lex's smile widened a bit as Clark's cheeks burned.

"You know, I'm pretty sure that this isn't how it's supposed to go..." Clark complained, feeling really tired and out of sorts all of a sudden. "Aren't you supposed to just say something like 'hey, I think we might be soulmates' and ask to see my wrist?" Instead of, you know, teasing him until he died of sheer embarrassment or whatever?

Lex's smile quirked up at the corner, and he looked a bit rueful. "I'm a rather nonstandard person," he said, rising to his feet. "And these are rather unusual circumstances, so..." Clark watched him uncertainly as he moved over to the coffee table over by the couches and grabbed a notebook and a pencil. Then he returned to Clark's side and sat back down next to him.

He carefully tore out and then handed over a couple of the sheets of paper -- they looked like handwritten notes -- and scribbled in the notebook a bit more before tearing out that sheet and passing it over, too.

Clark looked down at what he had: a couple pages of handwritten notes, and the new sheet, which had the alphabet written at the top of the page in upper- and then lowercase, and underneath it--

Clark stared at the dreaded phrase, and then he started, because it looked... it looked _exactly_...

Clark raised his arm and shoved his shirtsleeve up, even though he really didn't need to check -- he'd practically memorized the look of his soulmark over the years, and--

God. They looked _exactly_ the same! --Well, almost. There were tiny differences here and there -- the normal stuff you saw because people weren't perfectly consistent when they wrote -- but it was obviously the same handwriting.

"I... I didn't know that they actually looked like..." Clark said weakly, his voice trailing off.

"You can verify that it's my handwriting against the other sheets," Lex told him, but Clark just looked up at him with a frown.

"Why would I need to do that? I saw you write it just now, yourself."

"Still," Lex said a little too casually, and that had Clark frowning for an entirely different reason.

"Why are you doing all this, trying so hard to convince me?" Clark said slowly, as he lowered his arm. He'd been pretty distracted by the whole handwriting-thing, but it wasn't like he hadn't noticed the way Lex had been staring at his wrist like a guy dying of thirst in the desert, but trying to pretend that he didn't really need the water that was _right there_ in front of him. "Shouldn't you be..." Clark put the papers down to the side on the fireplace mantle, off of his lap. "Shouldn't it be the other way around?" he said.

"You didn't seem to be trying very hard to convince me," Lex pointed out.

"That's not--" Argh. Why was this so hard?! Shouldn't it be easier? Lex was his _soulmate!_ ...Wasn't he? "You know, you seem really sure that it's me, but I didn't say anything about my soulmark when we met," Clark pointed out. "How do you know that this," he raised his wrist up, "isn't just a tattoo with the words you told me, that I got after the fact?" If he had, he'd be a horrible person, sure, but shouldn't Lex be being more careful about this? He seemed like a smart, interesting guy -- well, smart except for the assuming Clark was his soulmate without really checking stuff -- and he did have a lot of money, right?

Most people weren't all that careful when they first got their marks -- in fact, a lot of people flaunted it, trying to let as many people know as possible, because why wouldn't they try to find their soulmate faster? And even if someone was careful and didn't want people to know, you couldn't keep your wrist covered 24-7. There were even website databases devoted to cataloguing people's marks -- with or without people's permission, not all of them were legal -- and some of those sites specialized in keeping track of celebrities and rich people and stuff. If Lex had gotten his mark when he was younger -- which he must have if he'd seen it go through that many color changes when Clark was that young himself -- then somebody had to have seen it at some point. Gym class was universal -- you couldn't wear a watch in gym, or bracelets, or any other jewelry or rings or stuff. So somebody would've caught at least a glance of it at some point, in the locker room or the showers. Nobody could be that careful.

Clark didn't know whether Lex was listed on one of those websites or not, but he wouldn't be surprised if he was. And while Clark hadn't checked any of those, and wasn't trying to scam Lex or anything, _Lex_ couldn't have known that. And he wouldn't be surprised if somebody had tried to trick Lex into thinking they were soulmates before, either. He seemed like the kind of guy you'd want on your side, if you could choose -- the constant teasing might even be worth it.

"May I see both of your wrists?" Lex asked calmly. Clark frowned but held them both out, not sure why Lex wanted to see both of them. Unless he was one of the really rare few who had their soulmark on their left wrist, and was trying to pull a fast one and... Okay, maybe the whole reason Lex was so calm was because he was so used to this. Him not seeming to take things all that seriously might be a defense mechanism or something, maybe. Scare off the ones who weren't actually it.

Lex checked them both dutifully, fingers lightly touching the backs of Clark's hands and prompting Clark to rotate them around carefully so Lex could see better. After a while, he looked up at Clark and withdrew his hands to his lap.

"Looks real to me," he said simply, as though he'd never really had any doubt.

Clark pulled his arms back and grimaced, rubbing at his right wrist again. "But--"

"I'm left-hand dominant, and the words are slanted properly, in my own handwriting, and positioned in the standard location around your right wrist," Lex said, gesturing with a hand at Clark's marked wrist, then pointing at the other. "Your left wrist is clear. It doesn't look like you've tried to write over anything or cover anything up on either. And while it might be possible for you to have gotten a tattoo while your own soulmark hasn't appeared yet," Lex told him, "that would be remarkably short-sighted planning," which was true, even if it was kind of a cold thought to have to consider. Pretty much all nuptial agreements included a clause about false soulmarks nullifying the marriage to discourage that sort of thing. Sometimes there were even penalties, depending on the state. Alaska was super-strict on that stuff; so was Texas. "And..." Lex pointed at Clark's right wrist. "That's my favorite color," Lex said, as if he was effectively closing the discussion.

"Okay, but that still doesn't--" Clark tried to object again.

"It does, actually," Lex said.

"You're _wearing_ purple," Clark said, looking at Lex's shirt. "It's not like that'd be a hard color to guess for you."

"That's true," Lex told him calmly. "But I wear different shades of purple than what I consider to be my favorite color. And I've never told or otherwise shown anyone exactly which shade I like best, until now."

Clark blinked at him. Then he shook himself. "Okay, this is _completely_ backwards. Why aren't you more worried about whether I might be lying or not?" And, oh man, that hurt _a lot_ coming out. "What aren't you telling me?" Because with the way Lex was acting, there had to be _something._ ...Oh, no. No, no. Was Lex already married to someone who was super-jealous or something? Or did he not _want_ a soulmate? It was super rare, really more of an urban legend than anything, but...

It was Lex's turn to sigh. He turned his body towards Clark, as Clark began to fidget in place, and started to undo his wristwatch band from his right wrist. He looked almost tentative about it.

Clark froze up for a second as Lex set the watch to the side -- because at first glance he'd thought that there was no mark there. But then he realized that Lex was wearing a flesh-colored band of cloth that was exactly the same shade as his wrist, and started breathing again.

"It's not so much what I'm not telling you," Lex told him. "It's more what I'm curious about."

And with that said, he slid his fingers under the thin cloth wristband -- which stretched -- and glanced up at Clark as he pulled it loose.

Clark blinked. And stared. And blinked and stared some more.

"Uh," said Clark. "Wow." He stared at it a little longer. He'd known it was weird that Lex knew about the colors, but _still_.

"You can't read this?" Lex said. The disappointment and disbelief in his voice barely registered.

"No," Clark said, still staring at the mark. "...I guess I go travelling pretty far away in the future," Clark said, while continuing to stare at it, because while Lex's soulmark was most definitely in both red and blue, in the shades Clark loved best together, that was definitely _not_ written in English.

"That's _not_ how it works, Clark," he was told in peevish tones, which had him glancing up at Lex again.

"Uh, yeah it is," Clark told him. Then he blinked as he realized that his hand had moved forward almost without his own volition, hovering above Lex's soulmark. He got a mental grip and curled his fingers into his palm and pulled away slightly; he'd been about to touch it. That would've been kind of... rude, or weird, or something.

Not that Clark _wasn't_ completely weird or anything -- because he totally _was_ \-- and his soulmate was _his soulmate_ and should like and respect that **because** they were soulmates -- but, y'know, _boundaries_.

Plus, they'd only just met.

"No, it isn't!" Lex insisted, and now he was starting to sound as peeved with Clark as Clark had been with him, earlier. ...Er. Maybe they _were_ meant for each other.

"Why do you think that's not how it works?" Clark asked, looking up at him and feeling confused. He'd never heard of anyone having figured out exactly what the criteria were for the language the soulmarks were written in, before. As far as he knew, there weren't any known hard-and-fast rules for it -- that, _or_ the timing of their appearance. It wasn't random, but there were almost more 'exceptions' to the 'rules' than not.

"My soulmark should be written in your primary language!" Lex informed him.

"My _what?_ " Clark asked.

"Your-- your native tongue," Lex said, almost seeming to wince as he rephrased it. "And I shouldn't have seen it until I was able to read it!"

Clark frowned at him, because that wasn't what he'd gotten out of what-all he'd read, not at all. "I thought that was supposed to be until you'd understand it, not just read it."

"What?" Apparently now it was Lex's turn to be confused.

Clark resisted the urge to rub the back of his neck and sigh. "Well, if people only had to know how to read it, not understand it, to usually have it show up, then why do people have to learn a language to get it to show up, instead of just the alphabet letters and the syllables so that they'd be able to sound out the words?" Clark put out there.

Lex sat there and stared at him.

"And if it's supposed to show up only when a person can read it, then how does that work for babies who get born with soulmarks?" Clark added. "Or for their soulmates, if their 'mark shows up right away... or around the same time or whatever." He tried to ease away from the last, because that was actually kind of a loaded topic; some of the religious types were a bit wacky about what that meant about when a baby, or a fetus, was a "person" -- when a person had a soul. And people without a mark... well.

Clark shook it off; Lex didn't seem like that kind of person, and it was a moot point for the two of them, anyway. "Babies can't read, and they sometimes get a soulmark before they can even talk. And, if the 'mark is supposed to be written in the baby's native tongue, or primary language, or whatever, then how does that show up around their soulmate's wrist in English or Spanish or whatever? A baby doesn't have a language they can speak in -- or write yet, either. So how does the handwriting thing work?" That had really been the part that threw him, earlier, when Lex had shown him his own handwriting and it had matched.

...Great. Now his soulmate looked a little poleaxed or something.

"Who told you that stuff, anyway?" Clark asked, curious and leaning in a little, as Lex cocked then twitched his head, a little like he was trying to throw off his confusion.

"Scientific journals; textbooks," Clark was told succinctly. "Reputable sources." Lex frowned for a bit, obviously thinking it all over. "...Why hasn't this come up before?" he muttered. He sounded a little sour about the whole thing.

"Maybe it did, and nobody wanted to listen?" Clark said. It just seemed like common sense to him, but then so did a lot of stuff did that other people didn't necessarily seem to get (...well, except poetry and stuff like that). He'd read the entire town library by this point (something that Chloe was working on now; not that he'd tell her that), and stuff like this happened all the time apparently. "Like static electricity?" Housewives had known about that when dusting since forever, but scientific theory had said it was impossible for a long time, and scientists had practically ignored it even, for ages ...until atomic theory had gotten revised, breaking things down further by added charged particles like electrons and protons and stuff. _Then_ suddenly everybody was okay with it.

Lex gave him a long, sharp look at the latter comment, and Clark almost bit down on his tongue lightly behind his teeth.

"...I suppose I shouldn't be worrying about how badly our marks might or might not be breaking the rules," Lex mused slowly. "Considering the color of mine is already breaking the 'known' rules."

Clark tried not to blush again and nodded. What with it being two colors and all, yeah, it was kind of already a bit weird.

"You've really never heard of any soulmarks having more than one color?" Clark asked.

Lex shook his head. "Have you?"

"No," Clark admitted easily. He hadn't even considered it a possibility. He'd probably read a lot more stuff than Lex had on the 'fringe' cases, too. Random newspaper articles and eyewitness accounts without a bunch of double-checking by 'reliable' or 'respectable' sources probably made them not 'legitimate' enough to be "reputable" enough for Lex to have heard about.

Lex grimaced, then let out a long, soft sigh that was almost just a deep, slow breath out. "Hm."

"Um," said Clark, fidgeting in place again. He couldn't help it. Lex looked up at him again. "You aren't actually, um... already marriedorengagedorsomethingareyou?" Clark practically squeaked out the last bit.

Lex's eyebrows went up, then came down again, and his expression settled into something almost like amusement.

"No," Lex told him. "No significant others just yet. You?" he asked.

Clark blushed and shook his head again.

"Hm." Lex was watching him, and seemed to be paying closer attention to him than before. ...Or maybe he was just being more open about it. "Are you attracted to guys?"

"Huh?" Clark felt confused -- because where had that come from? -- then a little shocked -- because _oh_ \-- and then a little... actually, he wasn't sure _what_ he felt. "I, um..." He fidgeted again. "Never really thought about it before," Clark admitted, his gaze sliding away from Lex's own. "--Your handwriting's really girly!" he protested, looking back up at him and feeling a little defensive all-at-once.

Lex blinked at him, then smiled. "Is it?"

"You wrote it in cursive! ...I mean, the whatever-that-makes-the-marks did." Clark muttered the last part.

"Oh, do you subscribe to the 'magic spell' theory, then?" Lex asked, and it looked like his eyes were smiling at him, now, even if his mouth wasn't anymore.

Clark shrugged. "Do you?" Some people said it was a magic love spell by a coven crafted a zillion years ago; some people said it was a more recent curse because there wasn't any evidence of it in writing before a certain point. The church had said it was witchcraft at one point, briefly, and then made an about-face and said it was a miracle from god. The same people who said it was a curse also tended to say things like the spell being meant to find people who weren't actually meant to be compatible and trick them into keeping them from their _real_ true loves, so that wasn't exactly so popular with anybody but the conspiracy theorists and the paranoid crazies. (...And Lana's Aunt Nell, after awhile, which proved to Clark that his dad had probably just dodged a major bullet, right there, with meeting his mom and getting away from her.)

"I've no evidence either way," Lex said, with a small smirk. "Science hasn't been able to explain it, yet."

"I guess." Clark bit his lip, then forced himself to ask, "Do you like boys? --Guys. I mean guys. Do you like, um, nnnm." And now Clark could probably light a fire by holding a stick of wood up to his face. Geez. Spaz, much?

Lex's lips twitched at the corners. "I don't know," he told Clark. "I've never really thought about it before."

Clark sat there and waited for Lex to say something like 'your "handwriting's" really girly', but he hadn't exactly been making fun of him, had he? He'd sounded serious; at least as serious as Clark had been, if less embarrassed by far.

And then Lex said, "I've had sexual relations with women before on occasion," and before that really registered enough for Clark to even begin to gape at him over how absolutely _casual_ he sounded about it, Lex added, "Is that a problem?"

"I-- I--" Clark tried to snap himself out of it before he started _visualizing_ things. "...I don't know?" he ended weakly. He'd heard of soulmate pairs who weren't opposite-sex before, and he'd heard vague things about some pairs not having a sexual relationship for some odd reason. While he'd never considered the alternate possibility suggested by the former, given the fact that most soulmates were sexually attracted to each other, he'd never considered the more obvious result of what would happen if same-sex soulmates weren't attracted to the opposite sex, either.

"Mm. All right," Lex said. "Have you?"

It took Clark a minute. Then he shook his head furiously. He couldn't imagine why Lex would think that he might've...!

"You're fifteen. It happens," Lex answered the question Clark hadn't asked.

"Not to me," Clark mumbled. "I... I've been kissed once. Sort of. By a girl."

"Oh?"

Clark just shook his head. That had been Chloe in his barn, the first day he'd met her, and completely unexpected. But... "She acts like it had never happened." Some days, he wondered if it _had_ actually happened. So he doubted that really counted. Especially when Lex was talking about actual _sex_ with people. Kisses seemed mild by comparison.

"Well." Lex straightened a bit, then leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. "All right, then. I think I'll forgo any... opportunities that may come my way in the future," Lex smirked almost self-deprecatingly, "at least until we've both had some time to think about it, and have a better idea on whether each of us likes guys or not."

Clark blushed a bit. "Um, me too," he said quietly. Not that that was saying much, but still.

Lex blinked at him. "You don't have to," he began, but Clark shook his head and cut him off.

"I want to."

Lex did that sigh-that-wasn't-a-sigh thing again, and his expression softened a bit. "...All right." He tilted his head at Clark slightly. "It may make it more difficult for you to determine which gender or genders you prefer, though." He said it almost like a question.

Clark shook his head again and tried not to blush. He hadn't thought of possibly liking guys **and** girls, either.

Then he finally thought of something that he'd been too distracted by Lex to think about before.

Clark covered his face with his hands and bent forwards over his legs.

"Clark?" Lex sounded suddenly concerned. "What's wrong?"

"Argh!" Clark groaned. "My dad's gonna kill me!"

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: ...Because Jonathan Kent is _so_ going to be down with Lionel Luthor's son being his son's soulmate. _Riiight._ Sure he is! (Heh.) *evil grin*
> 
> Also, I'm trying to decide whether to spend NaNoWriMo working on completing more of my sv!fic WIPs, or writing an actual original work. Thoughts?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: In which the author continues to be a pain in the ass to the characters herein ;) --Still not sorry! :)
> 
> (Also, note the tags -- this is a mostly-platonic fic, but this chapter puts the truth to the 'Underage' marking. You've been warned.)

~*~*~*~*~*~

"My dad is gonna kill me," Clark said.

Lex let the door to the registration center swing shut behind him as he stepped outside and up to Clark's side. Clark was standing on the sidewalk, holding his new ID card, and Lex watched him while trying to decipher whether Clark's tone had been something approaching reverential, or if he was simply flat-out shocked beyond his ability to comprehend the enormity of what he'd just done, without any input from his parents or anyone else.

From the way Clark was holding the card at the edges between his fingers, staring at it wide-eyed, Lex decided it was probably a mixture of both. With maybe a bit of prayer there in the middle.

"It's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission," Lex said, as he slid his own card into his wallet and slipped that back into a pocket, though he knew full well from his own father that begging forgiveness didn't always result in forgiveness being received.

"Easier, not better," Clark corrected absently, and Lex felt his eyebrows go up a bit at that.

"A fine distinction I can live with," Lex noted for posterity -- and he really, really could. Nothing short of proving they weren't actually soulmates could get their IDs and shiny new rights revoked now. And since they _were_ soulmates...

Lex smiled.

"Still thought it'd be harder than that," Clark said under his breath, frowning as he finally put his own card away in his back pocket and looked over at Lex. "I can't believe they didn't question you more on yours."

"I can't believe they questioned me at all," Lex said dryly. They probably only had because Clark was 15. Supposedly. He really didn't look it. Lex couldn't exactly begrudge them their due diligence, though it hadn't done the authorities any good. While the response that he and Clark had given the town officials had been true, it had also been highly misleading. Oh no, Clark's parents hadn't objected to their registration, not at all...

...but they hadn't exactly asked them first, either. With Clark being a minor, his parents could have refused to let him register -- if they'd found out about it in time to try and block it, before they'd tried to register. Once it was in the system, in theory they should still have been able to put some sort of injunction in place to block it, but in practice it was far too late to try and get them deregistered. And it _was_ in the system now; their ID cards with their new status were proof of that. Now, even putting in their best effort, the most Clark's parents might be able to do at this point would be to curtail Lex's visiting rights, and try to have imposed a few other lesser restrictions on their interactions together.

The most important part -- which Lex _hadn't_ brought up with Clark beforehand -- that was a load off of his mind now, were the loosened restrictions on the age of consent laws that the soulmark pair registration now granted him. The fact was that because Clark was underage, under normal circumstances Lex would still end up in jail and charged with statutory rape for anything even remotely like sexual behavior between them, no questions asked -- even for something as simple as kissing, even if Clark was the one who pushed advances on Lex instead of the other way around. And that was before taking into account Kansas' state laws on homosexuality ...between _non-soulmate_ couples, that is.

The Romeo and Juliet exemptions were broadened slightly for soulmark pairs of any gender-type, but that didn't quite help them; for Lex, at 21, and with Clark at 15, they were right on the edges of the grey zone in terms of legality... until Clark turned 16. If Clark _had_ been of-age, they would now have a broad exemption by the federal government over all the draconian local and state laws that otherwise existed to stop others from doing the same with such a large age difference; because Clark wasn't legal yet, those broad exemptions were reduced to a slew of not-quite-protections instead. ...But, their being formally registered would at least leave anyone in authority taking a second look at what might (or might not) have actually happened if someone supposedly 'caught' them at something; Lex could now only be charged with a misdemeanor of 'corruption of a minor' instead of being slapped with a felony and jail time, and that was assuming the absolute worst came to pass.

\--Not that Lex wanted to have sex with Clark, or even kiss him necessarily! He hadn't been lying when he'd told Clark that he, like Clark, had never thought about doing such before with men. He hadn't wanted to register for _that_. He just didn't want to risk going to jail -- for, as an example, Clark thoughtlessly giving him a kiss him on the cheek in front of his parents, or anyone else in town -- for what would be the normal, expected innocent gestures between them as soulmates, even if 'like' never evolved more deeply into 'love'.

He didn't know Clark's parents yet, and he wasn't about to discount the possibility of a couple of pissed-off parents lying to the town police about what they "saw" that nasty Luthor man doing to their son, just to get rid of him, and nevermind the truth or anything else -- like, say, their own son's emotional well-being.

Lex took in a deep, cleansing breath, and let it out again, trying to release the tension in him. There wasn't any use getting riled up about the possibilities until he had a better idea of the actual situation. Maybe Clark's father was more reasonable than Clark had made him sound...

...and pigs would likely fly in the next five minutes. Lex shook his head at himself; he'd met Jonathan Kent, however briefly, and the man hadn't liked him. Whatever happened, it was likely to get a good bit ugly before it got any better. _If_ it got better.

"Why would you think they would question me on my ‘mark?" Lex asked his soulmate.

"Well, I mean, it's not like yours is legible to confirm the bond," Clark muttered, looking almost guilty. Lex really wondered about Clark's sudden-without-warning mood changes. And he'd thought _he_ was mercurial.

"Clark, they'd have to take that much on faith, regardless. There weren't exactly any witnesses who could confirm that what we say we said to each other was what we actually said to each other," Lex reminded him.

Clark winced.

"Look," Lex leveled with him. "You know as well as I do that, in some ways, a soulmark pair registration grants more rights than a marriage certificate does, if different ones." A registration was also a lot more binding, and almost impossible to overturn once a positive evaluation was done and the paperwork submitted to the proper authorities. "Everyone knows that. They teach it school. No-one goes into this lightly." _They_ certainly hadn't. Lex had even quizzed him a bit on some of the legal implications, just to make sure he'd known what he was getting into. "The cost of accidentally registering to the wrong person in good faith is generally felt to be so high that almost no-one risks registration unless and until they're sure." No-one wanted to be stuck in a relationship with someone who wasn't their soulmate, after all, especially not with the near-certainty that they _would_ meet their soulmate _eventually_ someday.

Clark looked over at him. "I know that, but... that's kind of my point," he said, as they walked back towards Lex's car. "Shouldn't they be asking more questions, since a registration’s so important and so hard to undo? So that if there's a mistake, they catch it first?"

Lex shook his head as he opened the driver's side car door and slid in behind the wheel, as Clark dropped down into the seat next to him and pulled the passenger’s side door shut. He glanced over at Clark as he started the engine. "If there were a lot of mistakes, maybe they would. But in practice, if you look at the statistics worldwide, the vast majority of the people who register are actually paired; very few people try to get a deregistration, and it's only a vanishingly small number of those cases that aren't because of some kind of 'mark fraud on the part of one or both parties." And the number of ‘mark fraud cases per year was a small fraction of a percentage of the registrations that went through. "That said, I don't doubt it would have gone very differently if we hadn't both been telling them the exact same thing."

"But..." Clark's waffling was starting to get to Lex. Or was it simply a need for reassurance? He was only a young teenager still, despite his height and his looks.

"Clark, those people are trained professionals, and I'm certain that the ones who saw us today are perfectly capable at their jobs, and as such well-able to identify all the other," he glanced down at his wrist, "somewhat less-glaring, but still incredibly obvious, signs that are usually present between soulmates, when they see a pair of 'bonded individuals arrive together -- and did," Lex told his soulmate almost ruefully.

He watched Clark blush a bit sitting next to him as he released the parking brake and pulled out of the parking lot.

"It will be fine," Lex said reassuringly, as he turned onto the roadway and merged into traffic. And it would be. Everything was just fine. If worst came to worst and the Kents kicked their son out of the house for registering behind their backs to an older man -- to a Luthor of all people -- and Clark ended up having to stay in the mansion with him... well, Lex certainly wouldn’t be the one to protest. It was a drafty old thing, and Lex wouldn't mind the company. Hell, if he'd thought he could get away with it, he'd be sequestering them both there right now. With their proof of registration in-hand, and other concerns out of the way, he'd moved on to now worrying about whether Clark would cave to Jonathan and leave them stuck with the opposite end result -- only being able to see each other for a few hours on weekends, in a neutral and public location, while supervised by one or more of Clark's parents. It would be uncomfortable for the both of them if that was forced upon them, but they would survive it.

He, for one, would be counting the days until Clark's 16'th birthday, to the very day and hour those restrictions would no longer apply, if it did happen, but he'd manage to find some way to grit his teeth and bear it.

Of course, if the Kents pulled that on their son, Clark wouldn't necessarily be inclined to stay with them much longer. Usually, by the end of their first year together, if not sooner, most soulmates did _not_ take interference in their relationship from others well (...assuming they’d even put up with such to begin with). If Clark's parents jerked them around now, it was entirely possible that Clark would end up moving into the mansion with him the day he hit sixteen, and, thank god, that was only a scant few months away.

Lex blinked a few times as he slowed to a stop in front of a red light, then sat there awhile, staring at the steering wheel.

"Um, Lex? Are you okay?"

Lex blinked again, then shook himself mentally when he realized the light had turned green a few seconds ago. He hit the gas pedal and got them moving again fast enough that anyone outside the car would not, _should not_ have noticed that he’d zoned out for a minute there.

"I just realized that I've been thinking about you moving into the mansion with me within the next year as if it were a given," Lex said slowly.

"You... are?"

Lex nodded once, cautiously. "And it didn't seem out of the ordinary or odd at all..." He trailed off. He wasn't quite sure what to think about that. "That's... far too much, too soon. Isn't it?" Too soon, too fast, to even consider. What was he thinking?

...Was that something he actually wanted, Clark moving into the mansion with him, or only something he thought he wanted because that was expected of him? Lex wasn’t sure. Generally there was a social expectation that soulmates, once they’d discovered each other and decided to take the plunge and register, would live together. Could it be that he was blindly working under the assumption that living together was something he thought he was supposed to want? If that was the case -- if that was the reason he was planning for the outcome as a matter of course, without having really consciously thought the decision through -- it wouldn’t be a major cause of concern, because that was easy to fix; he’d simply need to sit down and expend some time and effort actually thinking about it.

It was possible that thus far he’d only expended about the same amount of consideration to the idea of Clark moving in with him as most people gave the thought of buying a car -- maybe they’d obsess over the make and model and year and the features included, but for most with the means, the thought of whether they actually needed a car for transportation didn’t necessarily occur to them; it was faster for a middling to long commute, less expensive than most public transportation options in the long run, and far too convenient for errands to not want one. Having and owning a car wasn’t really a need for most people, just an expected want. Having Clark with him nearby and in his home with him wasn’t a need, though it was something he was beginning to suspect he might actually want, the more he actually began to consider it. He liked Clark; he wanted him nearby. Always.

...At least, he _thought_ he did? He’d never been very good at identifying his own emotions, though, let alone controlling them properly.

If he really did feel that way, though, then that would be a problem -- meeting his soulmate and latching onto him immediately and so very strongly couldn’t be healthy, could it? Assuming they’d just move in together under those circumstances spoke of a rather large dose of possibly-unhealthy obsession, and that likely wasn’t good. Should he hold himself back? Clark was only fifteen, not even out of high school yet.

Lex didn’t realize how fast his mind had been racing as he wrestled with the subject -- not until Clark took in a sharp breath to speak, startling him out of his ever-increasingly frantic thoughts. They’d just hit the town limits when he’d had his quiet little mental freak-out, and they were only starting to pass the first fields of farmland on either side of them now. He heard Clark hesitantly say, “...I don’t know. We’re both kind of young, and... I mean, I’m still living with my parents. I… hadn’t really thought about moving out until… until after I’m at least eighteen, after I finish high school. I’m not sure I want to leave home...”

Lex pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car.

“...Lex?”

“I, ah...” I just need to think. I just need to think about this and… we…

Oh. _We._

Lex turned the car off and pulled the keys out of the ignition.

He turned in his seat and looked at Clark dead-on.

He took a breath and said, “I think we need to talk about this.”

“...Okay,” said Clark, his voice wavering a bit. Then he looked both more and less nervous as said, “Could we maybe, uh, not sit in...” He looked almost embarrassed. “Um, I mean, could we get out of the car and...?”

Within a minute, they’d both exited the car -- through Clark’s side door, with Lex easily hopping over the center console with Clark’s help -- and then they were sitting next to each other on the dirt and gravel, leaning back against the car frame.

They didn’t actually talk for a while. They both just sat there and breathed.

Lex, _impatient_ brave soul that he was, broke the silence first: “I’m starting to think that I may not have thought all this through quite as much as I’d thought I had,” he told Clark. He'd meant it to come out sounding calm, cool, and contemplative. Instead, he barely managed to get the words out without strangling on them.

“You seemed okay before,” Clark put out there quietly after a very drawn out moment or two.

That almost sounded like a compliment, except... “How do I seem now?”

“Kinda like you’re in shock.”

“…”

Lex had to admit that that likely wasn’t all that far off of the mark.

They both stared out at the cornfields in front of them, shoulders touching. Not looking at each other.

“I’m not sure if I was assuming you would move in with me because we’re soulmates and there’s an expectation that soulmates should live together, or whether I myself really do want it that badly and am being completely out of bounds even thinking about it this early in getting to know you,” Lex admitted quietly. “Before I met you, I’d spent a great deal of time trying to imagine who you were, and how to find you, and even how I might possibly convince you to register with me, but...” Lex took in a breath. “I don’t think I’ve even spent a second of time thinking about what we’d do after that. And...” Lex shivered hard.

“...And?” Clark said quietly.

Lex tried to silently order the sinking, fluttering sensation in the middle of his chest that really didn’t feel so good to _stop doing that_. “And it’s only just occurred to me now -- right before I stopped the car here in fact -- exactly how completely self-centered and arrogant I’ve been, about everything,” he told Clark, not looking at him. “I’ve been thinking about what decisions _I_ need to make, about myself and you. Not us together as a ‘we’.” Lex straightened in place. “We should be making decisions together, not separately, talking things through and coming to a consensus before doing anything. But I’m not used to thinking like that. To thinking about people other than myself.” Lex closed his eyes, took in a strained breath, and tried to steel himself. “And I don’t know what to do.” God help him for admitting that, but Clark was his _soulmate_ , and if he couldn’t tell him that... well, then, he was fucked, and the sooner he learned whether that was the case or not, the better. He opened his eyes, staring down at his folded hands, and fought down a hysterical giggle. “I suppose it sounds silly, saying it out loud, but I’d thought -- assumed, really -- that after I’d found you and we’d registered together, that I’d just _know_. That it’d be obvious. And easy.” That, or how it would be a complete clusterfuck like his parents had been, and how he’d have to run screaming in the opposite direction. One of the two.

Clark didn’t say anything for awhile.

By the time Clark responded to what he’d said, Lex wasn’t sure whether he was feeling calmer than he’d ever been, or about two seconds away from scraping off his skin to get at and excise the itching, squirming feeling beneath it with raw and bloody fingernails.

“I don’t think that soulmates should live together,” Clark told him.

Lex turned his head and looked at him.

Clark was biting his lip absently, still staring off into the fields. He was clearly thinking on what Lex had said seriously, though. “I mean, I don’t think that it’s that soulmates _should_ live together,” Clark said slowly, and Lex began to breath again. “I think that maybe... it’s the other way around. Maybe soulmates usually _want_ to live together, so... that’s why they do? And people expect that because it happens so often. Maybe it’s normal for you to think like that?” he said, as he turned his head to look at Lex. “A lot of people think being soulmates means getting married. Do you think that, too? Do you want that?”

Lex hesitated for a moment, a bit stunned by the question, and the magnitude of the decision implied there. Then he shook his head. “No. I don’t think so... not at-present.” Then he stifled a wince. “But I’ve never thought of registration and marriage as necessarily going hand-in-hand,” he elaborated upon, when he realized how final that had sounded. And that particular current lack of want hardly settled the question of whether he’d effectively brainwashed himself into thinking he wanted what he thought society’s demands dictated to him, or if conversely there might be some things that were his true feelings on the matter despite flying in the face of general expectation. He’d need to try and find a different counterexample... if there was one.

“Okay,” Clark said, nodding. “Neither do I, though I’m pretty sure that happens a lot.” Clark hesitated for a moment. “Probably because a lot of people don’t like the idea of sharing their spouse with another person, even if they’re... uh...” Clark trailed off.

“Even if their soulbond with that other person is purely platonic?” Lex offered, to a blank look. “--Not of a sexual nature or inclination,” he restated, and Clark nodded.

“We aren’t thinking about getting married, and if I moved in with you, I know I’d miss my parents,” Clark told him. “I don’t think I can do that.”

Lex hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but he could understand it. If he’d had an older soulmate, and that someone had asked him to move in with him at fifteen, Lex would have jumped at the chance to get away from Lionel… but if he’d been _thirteen_ , and his mother still alive, he wouldn’t have. It still felt a bit like a sucker punch to hear Clark say it so plainly, though.

Clark wasn’t done yet, though his gaze dropped to his lap and he seemed to be struggling with how to articulate what he wanted to say.

“I… don’t want to _not_ move in with you, though,” Clark told him, and Lex felt immediately better. “I want to see you, and spend time with you. I want to get to know you. --I want to be able to talk with you about anything,” Clark told him the last almost in a rush, and Lex abruptly felt sky-high at this pronouncement.

“No secrets,” Lex breathed out.

“Y-yeah.” Clark looked slightly pale, but his cheeks were flushed. He nodded. “I don’t want there to be any secrets between us.” His fingers were twisted together in his lap as he stared at Lex. “I want to be able to trust you, and-- and--”

“--Yes,” Lex said, and he could feel how wide his eyes were, how erratic his breathing had become, and now he was utterly certain that this, yes, _this_ was why they were soulmates, this was their bond, this was what he wanted, they wanted, they _both_ wanted, Clark was _his_ \-- yes, **his** \-- _yes-yes-yes--!_

Lex reached out, grabbed Clark by the shirt and kissed him.

Then he _realized what he was doing_ , let go abruptly and pushed himself away, immediately stuttering out apologies.

Clark’s response to this was to blush furiously. It was also to reach forward and gather him up in a gentle hug.

Lex opted to shut up immediately, and slid his arms around Clark’s torso shortly thereafter.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark felt like his face might combust. Lex had kissed him. On the lips.

No tongue or anything (-- _ew, Pete, really? why would people do **that?**_ \--), but still. He’d been kissed.

And the only problem Lex seemed to have with it -- if Clark understood Lex's stuttered-out apologies correctly -- was that Lex had promised himself that he wasn’t going to do that unless and until they’d talked about it, and hadn’t thought he’d wanted to do that in the first place. Lex had _not_ said at any point that he wanted to take back the kiss for being some kind of accident or mistake or something.

It had been kind of nice. He’d liked Lex kissing him better than the kiss with Chloe. ...Maybe it was different, when the other person liked you back?

Clark also wasn’t stupid; he knew about the age restrictions and stuff for sex and kissing and things, and how being soulbonded could change things, and he’d wondered why Lex had carefully skirted around mentioning anything to do with them when they’d been talking about the registration. But if Lex had ‘promised’ not to do things like kiss him, then he’d obviously thought about things like kissing him... and Lex must’ve been making _silent_ promises to himself, because he hadn’t exactly promised Clark anything but space to let him date other people and figure things out like his orientation. It wasn’t like Lex kissing him would stop Clark from dating other people -- well, okay, maybe it would. But it wasn’t like Lex knew that. ...Well, not yet, anyway.

Lex was also apparently very huggy, because when Clark had tried hugging him instead, he’d taken to it like a pro, and he seemed completely okay with hugging Clark as long as he wanted to be hugged for, until Clark eventually let go of him.

...Which was also really nice, just in a different way. His dad had been less huggy with him as Clark had gotten older, and sometimes it felt almost weird to hug his mom now -- he couldn’t just do it whenever anymore. It almost felt like he was supposed to have a reason now, something more than ‘I just want to’.

He’d been pretty worried when Lex had first pulled over to the side of the road. At first, when Lex had said they needed to talk, he’d thought that Lex might be angry with him for not agreeing to move in with him immediately, and had been afraid that Lex had changed his mind about the soulbond registration and not wanted him after all, or something. Instead, Lex had just been being open with him about being a little panicky and confused because he had no idea what to do next, and Clark was getting kisses and hugs.

So, yeah, Clark was feeling pretty happy right now.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: _Hugs!!!_ Because _hugs!_ :)
> 
> Oh, don’t worry folks, we’ll be getting to Jonathan in a second...
> 
> (*muah-ha-ha*)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: *innocent look* Oh, I'm sorry, did I say that we'll be getting to Jonathan in a second? What I _meant_ to say was…
> 
> *evil grin*

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex was nervous.

He could admit that. It certainly didn't help not to.

"Lex. Um…”

Lex slowly uncurled his fingers from around the steering wheel. He took in a breath and let it out slowly.

Clark was looking at him sideways. They'd been sitting in the car for a good five minutes now, going on six, parked in the middle of the Kent's driveway.

Lex took another calming breath in and out again, then undid the seatbelt and unlocked and opened the car door. Clark did the same on his side.

They both pushed themselves out of the opposite sides of the car and straightened, not quite closing the car doors in unison.

“It's okay,” Clark told him. Lex turned and looked at him. "My mom won't let my dad do anything too crazy.”

...God, Lex hoped so.

"If I die, I'm leaving you the truck,” Lex said not quite under his breath, and Clark let out a soft laugh, breaking the tension and lifting the mood.

Lex pulled in another breath, steeling himself, and strode forward, head held high. He met Clark around the front of the car and proceeded towards the front porch, they proceeded towards the front porch together.

They ascended the steps, and Clark pulled out his house keys. Lex held the screen door for him as he unlocked the front door.

Clark reached forward, but his hand stilled on the doorknob, and he glanced up at Lex.They locked gaze for a moment, and Lex felt himself set his resolve.

Clark, for his part, firmed his jaw and looked resolute.

He opened the door and held it for Lex as he stepped inside.

"Dad?” Clark called out as he moved out of the hallway they were in and off to the left.

Lex followed him into what looked like the living room and came to a screeching halt.

"What are _you_ doing here?” Lex blurted out, completely taken off guard as he stared up at his father, Lionel Luthor, who was standing in the middle of Clark's household shoulder-to-shoulder with a grim-faced Jonathan Kent.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: And you people thought it was going to be bad! *lolol* :-D
> 
> \--Yes, more is coming. I'm writing on a plane and posting between flights :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: *ahem* _Right._ So, as I was saying... we’ll be getting to Jonathan -- _and Lionel_ \-- in a moment! *g* And after _that_ cliffy, you all do realize that there are things other than “bad” that can happen right? For instance, “not bad” doesn’t necessarily imply “not worse” for our fine Smallvillian friends, no? *innocent look*
> 
> Oh, and I totally owe people in the comments gold stars (am I becoming too predictable in my old age? hmmm...) and I should give out cookies in general as an apology for not managing to get this chapter finished and you all off of that cliffy before I ended up letting myself succumb to the (somewhat-during, definitely-)post-travel exhaustion factor. My bad :-( (In partial-recompense, I’ve made this installment a little longer, in lieu of splitting things up, instead ;)
> 
> Anyways -- on with the fic! :) :)

~*~*~*~*~*~

Jonathan Kent was standing in the middle of his own living room, arms crossed, shoulder-to-shoulder with Lionel Luthor himself.

The parents in question were facing the both of _them_ **together** \-- _not_ each other, when by rights Lex felt he _ought_ to have been able to count on Jonathan working hard to tear a new one out of Lionel, not **join forces** with him! -- had the world gone _**mad?!**_

Clark shifted sideways -- closer to Lex, looking between the parentals. Lex slid his hand into Clark's before he really realized what he was doing, and once he had, he didn't pull away -- to the contrary, he firmed up his grip and felt a little galvanized by Clark's (hopefully soon to be ever-present) support, as Clark closed his hand around his in return.

"Who's he?” Clark asked him, frowning at Lionel, and when Lex glanced over at Clark, it occurred to Lex that if his soulmate hadn't known anything about Lionel before -- to the tune of Jonathan needing to enlighten him on the subject of Luthors and Luthor money -- then _of course_ he wouldn't recognize the man, either.

"My father,” Lex explained succinctly. He turned to Lionel and said, tersely and tensely, not quite comfortable enough to be smug about it yet, “It's too late, dad.” He gave Clark's hand an encouraging squeeze, and their fingers shifted, slid, and intertwined with ease. Lex fought down a slight shudder as his father looked on. "We've already registered.” He drew air into his chest, and felt like he was breathing out fire as he said, with much righteous vindication and a great deal of bloody satisfaction: " _ **I found him first.**_ ”

"No, you didn't,” he was told in unison by their fathers.

Lex felt himself flinch, taken aback, and for a moment he felt his mouth go dry as the bottom of his stomach plummeted to his feet.

"... What?” Lex croaked out, feeling faint.

"You aren't soulmates, Lex,” his father informed him with some unholy mixture of amusement, condescension, derision, and dismissal.

Lex felt his head clear. _Oh, thank god,_ he thought, with no small relief, because he knew full well Clark was his soulmate -- he _had_ to be! His father was just in reflexive, ignorant denial, didn’t know what he was talking about. He almost laughed in relief, because for a moment there he’d been afraid that they'd meant that--

"You've already met,” Jonathan informed them, and Lex’s mind went blank.

And the only thought he was capable of materializing in his head after that, was the fact that if they’d already met, then they couldn’t be soulmates.

Clark took in a sharp breath, loud enough that Lex heard it over the faint buzzing in his ears. But then Clark abruptly rallied, squeezing Lex's hand and looking _angry_ , of all things.

“ _When_ ,” Clark demanded of his father. “ _When_ did we meet?”

"Clark--” Jonathan sounded annoyed and exasperated at being questioned by his own son on the subject, which didn't bode well. It didn’t bode well at all.

Lex tried not to sway in place, because if they’d already met, then they would’ve _said something_ to each other -- why wouldn’t they have? -- and then what they’d said at the bridge wouldn’t have been their first words, which would mean that all _Lex_ had done was _accidentally_ blurt out what Clark’s **real** soulmate was going to say, and--

\--But that didn’t explain why Clark’s favorite colorset was around his wrist!

But his soulmark was illegible; if he couldn’t read it--

It was almost like he didn’t, _couldn’t_ quite match up--

His soulmark was _unique_. His situation...

Was his _situation_ unique, just like his soulmark?

_Why didn’t his soulmark match Clark’s words?!_

Oh, god. Oh. _God._ \--What if Clark was _Lex’s_ soulmate, but Lex himself wasn’t **Clark’s**? Red-and-blue was unique, but purple certainly wasn’t! There _had_ to be other people who liked that exact shade of purple, other than him!

\--Clark had thought his handwriting, the handwriting on his mark, looked girly, hadn’t he? And Clark had been the one to check Lex’s handwriting against his ‘mark; Lex hadn’t taken _that_ good a look at it. He’d been too busy marvelling over the fact that Clark had a favorite color _set_. When he’d looked over Clark’s wrists and his ‘mark, he’d been too preoccupied with, with... he’d been paying more attention to the _shade_ and the _words_ and the fact that they’d seemed _right_ than...

 _Why_ hadn’t he spent more time looking at it?! He’d barely even given it a cursory glance! What if--

If Clark had somebody else, and Lex had-- _needed_ Clark, but Clark didn’t **need** him-- what would that make Lex? ...Some kind of parasite? _Worse?_ Someone worse than--?

No. NO.

Lex forced himself to breath evenly. He would have passed out otherwise; he was sure of it. He was barely able to keep himself upright, to keep hanging onto Clark’s hand. He slowly reached up with his free hand and wrapped it around Clark’s arm, with a dogged sort of desperation.

It couldn’t be true, it just... couldn’t. Please, no.

“ _When_ did we meet?” Clark demanded of their parents again. “Did we speak to each other?” Clark pressed, sounding like he already knew the answer to the question he was posing, somehow.

Jonathan opened his mouth to respond, but then he blinked, closed it again, and got a slight frown. He _paused_.

Lionel looked slightly taken aback, then startled.

Lex stared at them and their unexpected responses.

Clark had a sharp look in his eyes, and a firm twist of a smile on his lips that spoke of vindication.

"...Clark?” Lex asked quietly, almost afraid to hope.

Clark turned his head towards him and looked at him.

"Lex,” he said, with a very different sort of smile on his face, “I don't remember meeting you before the bridge; do you?”

Lex hesitated. "No,” he admitted, almost under his breath. He didn't like having to reflect on the fact that he had memory recall problems for certain time periods of his life -- it made him uncomfortable; it felt like weakness. He 'liked’ informing people of the existence of those issues even less, and generally avoided even so much as alluding to it whenever possible. In this case, though... if he couldn’t tell his-- his-- If he couldn’t tell _Clark_...

But Clark didn’t frown at him, or needle him on it, or give any other sort of negative response. Lex had been ready to fight a cringe, almost expecting an angry, ‘why not?’ Instead, Clark simply nodded at him; he still had a small smile going, and his eyes were bright -- encouraging, almost.

“Right, we don’t remember meeting each other,” Clark told him. “So maybe we’ve met before,” he said, almost like it was a _so what?_ “But we can’t have _talked_ to each other. If we did, I think I would remember that. Because I would _remember_ meeting you.”

Lex’s breath caught.

Clark nodded again. “If we met before, I think we must have been really little when we did, too little to remember each other.” He glanced over a Jonathan for a moment, before returning his attention to Lex. “I don’t really remember anything from before I was 4 years old, and not a whole lot until after I turned 5,” he told Lex. “I didn’t really start _speaking_ to other people in complete sentences until I was about five and a half,” and Lex had to let out a soft laugh.

It was so simple. “Even if we met back then, we couldn’t have exchanged our first words to each other,” Lex repeated, a weight lifting off of him. They both had to talk to each other for it to ‘count’ by the ‘marks, and... “By the time we could both do that, we would have been able to remember meeting each other, and we don’t, so we haven’t since then, until... our first words between us at the bridge _were_ our first words between us.” They hadn’t gotten it wrong; they _were_ soulmates. Lex slowly let out a sigh of relief.

Clark smiled and nodded at him again.

Lex leaned forward and let his forehead hit against Clark’s shoulder with a soft thump. He felt his shoulders sag slightly; his chest felt less tight. He felt silly, and very stupid; he’d been so stupid, to panic like that. He shouldn’t have let Lionel get to him like that. Not on this. Not _again_. --He _knew_ better. He’d let Lionel make him second-guess himself; he’d let him make him feel so afraid...

He’d let Lionel make him second-guess Clark. Having Clark. He’d let Lionel make him think he couldn’t _have_ Clark.

He’d almost let his father take Clark away from him.

He’d almost let his father _trick_ him into _throwing Clark away_.

_‘For his own good.’_

Lex closed his eyes and bit down on pure _RAGE._

Then he forced himself to stop gripping Clark’s arm so hard, before he gave him bruises or worse. Not that Clark complained. He was gripping Lex’s hand just as hard back.

Lex took a breath in, then out again. He opened his eyes.

He turned slightly to face them.

“He’s right, isn’t he?” Lex said flatly, and he wasn’t sure how he managed to make his voice sound hard as stone; it just did. “We didn’t speak to each other, whenever you remember us having met.” It still made him feel a little sick, the thought that, for that to have happened, Clark’s father and his own must have met sometime before this. Lex couldn’t imagine when that might’ve occurred, though...

...But that might very well explain Jonathan Kent’s rather firm dislike -- possibly borderline hatred -- for ‘Luthors’.

Unfortunately, Lex couldn’t exactly _disagree_ with that sentiment at-present, considering.

“No, you didn’t say a word, either of you,” he heard, and he blinked as a red-haired woman came around the corner and walked up to stand behind the two older men. They turned. She had a laundry basket on her hip, and an aggravated look on her face.

Clark smiled. “Hi, mom.”

“Hello, sweetheart,” Clark’s mother said, turning to give him a sunny smile. She then returned to giving her husband and Lex’s father an aggravated, reproachful look. “I can’t leave you alone for five minutes,” she huffed out in complaint, shifting the laundry basket off of her hip, then lifting it and setting it down on the couch behind her. “Honestly.” She shook her head.

“Martha--” Jonathan began.

“Don’t you ‘Martha’ me, Jonathan Kent!” Mrs. Kent said in warning tones, as she pulled a blanket out of the basket and tossed half of it over the back of the couch, then smoothed it down neatly. She turned back to him and pushed a few wayward strands of hair behind her ear. “Why are you harassing our son?” she asked, placing her hands on her hips.

Lex wasn’t sure what to think about the fact that Lionel was watching the interplay between the elder Kents with what looked to be at least as much curiosity -- if not outright fascination -- as he was, given how high his eyebrows had risen on his face.

“I--”

“Do you think he doesn’t _deserve_ to find his soulmate?” She crossed her arms at him.

“That’s not--!”

“Do you not trust him?” she scowled at her husband, who abruptly leaned forward.

“ _Not when he brings home a--_ ”

“--Jonathan!!”

“--Luthor,” he trailed off, grimacing at her scandalized exclamation, if not his own self. He seemed to realize that he’d stepped over a line somewhere.

Mrs. Kent huffed out a breath at him. “ _Jonathan Kent._ Are you trying to get between our son and his soulmate?”

Lex blinked at this, and at his shoulder Clark was all but bouncing on his feet by this point. What was going on here?

Jonathan jolted in place, looking taken aback, and he opened his mouth, then closed it again. Then he looked a bit poleaxed as something beyond his first knee-jerk reaction seemed to occur to him, and then a tad paler all of a sudden. “Martha--”

“Yes, dear?” she said primly, lifting her chin.

“It’s not... like that...” her husband trailed off, and oh, there had to be a story there! Mrs. Kent was playing dirty! ...But why? --For Clark?

Mrs. Kent gave him a long look. “I should think that we can trust our son to know his own mind, and make his own choices,” she said quellingly, before turning to said son. “Clark, is Lex your soulmate?”

“Yes,” Clark said, and Lex realized he was nodding along in his own response. He forced himself to stop, and tried not to blush.

“Well, there you are, then,” Mrs. Kent said, like that was the end of it.

“Martha, they got registered behind our backs!” Clark’s father all but complained, sounding harassed. “Clark’s too young to register without our permission. _He_ had to have paid them off!” he said, waving a hand at Lex and sounding downright indignant about the whole situation.

“Lex didn’t pay anybody off!” Clark practically yelled back angrily.

“A lack of explicit parental approval can’t stop the registration of a minor, only an injunction on-file can,” Lex elaborated. “Registrants don’t have to get explicit permission, minors or not.”

“Yes, they do. -- _You_ do. It’s a local ordinance,” Jonathan said, glaring at Lex like he ‘knew’ he’d just caught him in a lie.

“Well, then I doubt you understand the fine details of that ordinance fully,” Lex told him testily.

“Oh, no, son,” Lionel cut in dryly, with almost a chuckle. “He’s correct. You shouldn’t have been able to register to their son without their permission.” He ticked his head at Clark’s parents.

Lex clenched his jaw. His father, he didn’t think would be wrong about the reading of any legalities, and he’d made it sound like the registration might be able to be overturned on that technicality, damn him. Unfortunately, all Lex could say to that was, “Well, they didn’t ask.” Because their interviewers hadn’t asked. Not really. Not for actual **proof** of permission.

“Yes, they did.”

Four heads turned to look at Mrs. Kent.

“What?” Jonathan said, for the rest of them.

“They did ask,” Mrs. Kent repeated.

“They did not!” Jonathan said hotly.

Martha gave him a long look. It came across as not quite sly. “The registration center called the house while you were out in the fields earlier,” she told him, and it was then that Lex remembered that, at the very beginning of their registration process, when one of the two people who had been interviewing them had gone out for drinks for them -- coffee for him, water for Clark -- he hadn’t come _back_ for a good ten minutes. “When they got done explaining the situation, I told them yes.”

“You _what!?_ ” Jonathan was flabbergasted.

“I gave them permission to register to each other,” she repeated.

“ _Why?_ ”

Martha Kent leveled a look at her husband. “Because Clark isn’t stupid, and he wouldn’t go down there and register to someone unless he was _sure_ about it. He knows better.” She looked over at her son. And though Clark straightened a little and swallowed hard at the amount of trust that implied, or just maybe the very serious look she was giving him, after the briefest of hesitations he gave her a firm nod.

“But--” Jonathan Kent looked a little lost, then more than a little frustrated.

“ _Jonathan Kent_ ,” his wife said with no small exasperation. “They _are_ soulmates. And if you would just pay attention and _look_ at the two of them for more than two seconds, you’d know that yourself.”

Mr. Kent frowned at her, but with a put-upon sigh, he turned at looked at them both.

Lex looked between both of Clark’s parents, slightly taken aback at this, their last bit of interchange. He wasn’t-- it wasn’t _that_ obvious, was it? He release his right hand from Clark’s upper-bicep and let it fall back to his side, endeavoring to look calm and not too smitten, or whatever-he-was at the moment, to be a lack of ‘obvious’. And not flush at the leveled accusation. Or observation. Which was clearly way off.

Jonathan stared at the two of them for a few long moments, then grimaced and shook his head. Perversely, his seeming lack of clarification on their supposed ‘obviousness’ made Lex feel better.

Jonathan made grumbling noises under his breath. He didn’t, however, seem to know what else to say. That, or he was opting for silence because openly cursing out loud for several minutes straight wouldn’t go over well with his wife.

Lex was about ready to call this an unparallelled victory.

Lionel snorted.

Lex had to force himself not to roll his eyes at his father, while the rest of the Kents looked over at the mostly-silent observer of their near-domestic-meltdown.

“We _are_ soulmates, dad,” Lex said, trying not to sound as aggrieved as he felt, just then.

“No, you aren’t,” Lionel repeated, in the same tones he’d used earlier.

The Kents stared at him.

Clark broke the silence by leaning in to ask, “Um, was he reading the same stuff you were?”

 _Oh, if only._ Lex suppressed a sigh. “That’s... not the problem, Clark,” he told his soulmate, as he pinched the bridge of his nose with his right hand, still holding hands with Clark with his left. He was really _not_ looking forward to explaining this, not least of which because they were both going to end up sounding insane.

“Should I show him my ‘mark?” Clark asked, almost tentatively. Lex shook his head; he knew it wouldn’t help.

“Oh, yes, certainly, let’s see what you came up with,” Lionel said, almost insultingly, waving him forward.

Clark frowned uncertainly, but started to step forward -- up until Lex yanked him back by their joined hands. “Dad--” he began.

“Lionel--” Jonathan nearly growled out in low tones. “What the _hell_ are you implying?”

“Please don’t insult my intelligence,” Lionel drawled out. “If whatever you had painted onto your son’s wrist was legitimate, your boy would have said something, right away.” He had an almost smarmy grin going.

Jonathan straightened, and then Lex just about felt the steady gaze of Clark’s father burning holes through the side of his skull.

Lex gritted his teeth, remembering what he’d said to Clark and realizing how that must have sounded to his parents on-reading, and tried desperately not to wince.

He felt Clark’s hand tighten on his a bit. “Dad..." he heard his soulmate say with more than a little caution, and he felt the shift of atmosphere in the room. Things that Clark’s father -- and his mother -- both wanted to say. But weren’t saying. Because Lionel was standing right there, and... Clearly they weren’t stupid.

Lionel, somehow, must have misread it. “Son, if you’re actually taken in by all this..." Lionel waved a hand to encompass the room, and all the Kents therein, and shook his head at him. “That boy is not your soulmate,” he said, as if that put a close to the matter, ever the high-handed patrician of the Luthor household, the authoritative last word. After all, Lex had never been able to change his father’s mind before.

...And why, exactly, was he even _trying_ to convince his father of this?

Hell, wasn’t this a good thing? Maybe if he continued to think that, he’d deign to leave Clark _alone_...

Right. Because that was what Lionel did -- not mess with him. Ha. Not likely. Especially not on this. --No, Lex would much rather get him to see sense. Because, maybe then, he would _finally_...

“Lex?” he heard Clark ask him, unsure. He almost sounded like he was worried that he’d done something wrong. As if.

Lex shook his head once, shortly. “The problem, is not so much you, Clark, as him.” He took in a breath. “You see, Clark, he thinks that you’re an alien.”

The three parentals froze in place.

Clark just gave him a funny look. “Um, what?”

Lex stifled another sigh. “He thinks you’re an alien.”

Clark’s eyebrows slowly drifted upwards. “Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“Really.” The edges of his mouth were twitching upwards.

“Yes.”

“Like little-green-men aliens?” He was starting to grin.

“Well, maybe. Might be the grey ones, instead.”

Clark let out a giggle. Or, well, more of a stifled explosion of a laugh.

“ _\--Alexander!_ ” Lionel finally managed to get out, sounding stuffy as hell. Clark’s parents still looked a little poleaxed.

“Oh, _don’t even_ , dad,” Lex shot back at him tiredly, thoroughly done with him on the subject like he’d been for years, even if they’d never actually had it out like this. “I know what all those ‘secret astronomy club’ meetings were really all about.”

Clark blinked at him. “Um?” When Lex tilted his head at him, Clark expanded on his ‘um’ with, “I kind of like stargazing.”

“So do I,” said Lex. “But--”

“--Really?” Clark blurted out.

“I can name stars and constellations from several different cultural histories, including our own Anglo-European one,” Lex told him with a smile. But, getting back on topic, “That really wasn’t what they were doing, though. I overheard more than enough for that.”

“Lex!” Lionel protested. “That wasn’t--!”

“I was young, not stupid,” Lex informed him. Though it had taken him awhile to figure it out after the fact -- well into his late teens -- not that he was going to let his father know that, or let the true timeline of his youthful ignorance stop him from saying... “Just be glad I never told mom,” he ended.

Lionel’s jaw clacked shut. He actually looked a bit flabbergasted. ...Huh. His father speechless. Imagine that.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Lex said. “He’s a little obsessed over it, and has been for years. So it’s not your fault that he’s in denial. You’re just going to have to keep being disappointingly human for him.”

“Um. Sorry?” Clark said, mostly to his dad, though it was clear that he was trying desperately not to laugh.

Until he did. And then tried to stop, while gasping out, “Sorry, sorry, I just... Aliens? _Really?_ ”

Lex sighed and nodded. He couldn’t really do anything else.

Clark started laughing again.

Wow. Lex had never seen his dad look that kind of frustrated before. And slightly betrayed. ...And maybe almost a little embarrassed? He certainly looked like he wanted to be anywhere but still in the living room with him.

Clark’s parents continued to be silent, looking between them. They probably didn’t know how to take any of it.

Clark finally managed to calm down again, but he was still grinning up a storm, and Lex was feeling himself begin to smile helplessly back at him -- because, well, it _was_ a little silly, right? On the outside of things, anyway.

“I just, I don’t..." Clark seemed to be searching around for what he wanted to say. He finally settled on, “ _Why?_ ”

 _Ah. Of course he’d go for the hard one._ Lex rubbed a finger against the bridge of his nose, couldn’t help but grimace a little. “It’s, well, the writing...”

Clark blinked at him a few times.

“I did some digging.” A bit of an understatement, but details. “I couldn’t find a known language, alive or dead, that matches it.” Lex made a little helpless gesture with his free hand. “At one point, I thought to try and look for matching patterns between verbalized languages without a written alphabet and what was on my wrist. That led to, ah, a bit of research on general linguistics. Apparently, there are some grammatical constructs -- some patterns -- that we simply can’t naturally parse, which are never seen in any human language.” He paused, trying not to wince. “Guess what I noticed about my very own soulmark.” He gave Clark a self-deprecating smirk.

Clark’s eyebrows rose.

“Wait,” Clark said, “Wait-wait.” He held up a hand. “Are you telling me that _that_... is in an alien language?” he asked, pointing at Lex’s right wrist.

“More or less,” Lex said.

“Um.” Clark looked slightly stunned. “...Does that mean I get to go really _really_ far away travelling?” he asked, staring down at Lex’s wrist.

The parents all looked various flavors of startled. Lex covered a laugh with a cough. “Not necessarily. The more logical explanation is, well...” Lex had to almost laugh at himself over this one. “It’s completely possible for someone to codify a synthetic language that breaks those rules.” His lips twitched at the corners. “I could write up my own ‘made up’ language that matches this” -- he made a circling motion with his hand and wrist -- “for us. It wouldn’t be too difficult.”

Clark brought his gaze back up to meet his eyes, and almost pouted. “But what if I _want_ to go into space?” he asked, all too innocently, swinging their linked hands back and forth.

Lex barely stifled a laugh. “I think this might be easier.”

“But-- space!” Clark said, eyes sparkling with mischief. “I could seek out new life... and new civilizations!”

“Clark!” he all-but-laughed out.

“Space, Lex, the final frontier,” he said, widening his eyes on purpose. “ _SPACE_.”

Lex was grinning by this point. He couldn’t help it.

He shoved Clark’s shoulder a little with his own. Clark grinned back.

“ _Lex_ ,” his father said with much censure, and Lex turned and looked over at him, blinking.

It only then occurred to Lex that not only was he in a much better mood now, but that he had literally _forgotten that Lionel was even there_ in the same room with them. --As him. In the same room as... his...

And at the feeling of ice down his spine he got from the look Lionel was giving him -- giving _them_ , for it was obvious that _Lionel_ was **not** in a good mood, not at all -- he had to stifle a shiver as he remembered how _dangerous_ that forgetfulness might be. And he knew from his father’s own bragging that there had been many a Luthorcorp boardroom deal where Lionel had gotten the advantage and then kept it, all because a soulbonded pair on the opposite side of the negotiations hadn’t been able to focus on anyone other than themselves properly for more than a few minutes at a time. ...Admittedly, Lex wasn’t certain how that might apply to himself and Clark, or some other soulbonded pair of individuals outside of a boardroom, but if anyone could do it, it would be his father.

Lex felt his smile slowly fade, and a new uncertainty creep in. He was reminded that his father _also_ didn’t like being **ignored**. Not by anyone. Least of all _him_. Accidental, or otherwise.

His father was giving him that **penetrating** half-stare half-glare that had never boded well for him at any point in the past, and certainly wasn’t going to now.

“...Lex?” he heard Clark murmur under his breath, but only just.

Lex held onto Clark’s hand and twitched a tortured smile back onto his lips.

“Well,” Lex said, fighting the urge to swallow or lick his lips. “Dad. It _is_ a little silly, you know.”

“No, Lex,” his father began preponderously. “I don’t know.” He smiled, and not in a good way -- not that he ever did. “I don’t believe in aliens. I don’t know _where_ you get these ridiculous notions of yours from,” he was told.

“Mm,” Lex said through lips pressed thinly together. He suspected that he would only net more of the same if he further and more directly accused his father of trying to find Clark before he did -- and for god knew what purpose, perhaps to keep them separated just because he could? he’d never particularly liked or approved of Lex’s “weaknesses” -- and his insides felt suddenly cold. Still yet, there was the warmth of Clark’s hand, helping to anchor him.

He felt Clark squeeze a little. It felt reassuring. Supportive. On his side. ...Weird, that he could get all that from a little pressure, applied slowly, and released even more so.

Lionel stepped forward, and Lex had to force himself not to take a step back. To stand his ground. He wasn’t sure why he was having so much more trouble with this today here, now, but for some reason, Lionel just felt more _dangerous_ all of a sudden.

...But then, when had he ever laughed at his father?

He hadn’t done that, though.

 _Clark_ had.

Lex stiffened in place for only a moment, before quickly shifting forward -- instincts screaming at him -- and sideways out in front of Clark.

Lionel was still walking forward towards them, step by step.

Lex held Clark’s hand behind his back, ticked his chin up and braced -- for what, he didn’t quite know.

Lionel stopped only a bare foot away from Lex’s chest, and it took an effort not to shake. His muscles wanted to tremor. But he’d be damned if he’d let on to his father that that was the case.

“Luthor.”

His father’s gaze cut over towards the direction of Clark’s father’s voice. Lex had had trouble reading the tone of it -- some kind of warning? -- but he didn’t dare look away from Lionel’s face long enough to gauge whatever expression had gone with it, not just then.

Lionel’s near-sneer, however, told him more than he needed to know.

“Leave him alone.”

A quiet voice this time. Quiet, strong, and _final._ Clark. Behind him, but much closer now. Right at his back, almost hovering. Lex didn’t need it. He could take care of himself. He could protect Clark, surely.

Lionel’s eyes slid up and over Lex’s shoulder. Lex’s grip on Clark’s hand tightened.

“...Leave him alone?” Lionel gave a half-laugh. “Oh, I plan to.” He looked down at Lex again. “Now, Lex,” he said, as though it were a child’s game Lex were playing, and he well past the age of growing up and out of such things. “What _exactly_ did you think was going happen after this?” He made a gesture with his hand.

Lex felt the muscles in his back clench. He tried not to go completely rigid.

“Happily ever after?” Lionel asked him mockingly.

Lex clenched his teeth.

\--And Lionel looked briefly startled as he was yanked back -- away from Lex -- by a strong hand at his upper-arm. Attached to one Jonathan Kent.

“What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing, Luthor?” Clark’s father asked him, in darkening tones.

“I could ask _you_ the same question,” Lionel said smoothly, having recovered his footing and his mental balance at almost the same time. He jerked his arm from Jonathan’s grasp in a short motion, briefly looked him up and down, then right in the eye -- a hard stare. “I shouldn’t think you’d want your son around mine any more than I want mine around _yours_.”

Jonathan looked irritated, but he seemed to have no answer for this but to stand there, almost looming at Lionel’s side, glaring right back.

Lionel straightened his coat with a solid jerk at the bottom hem. He turned his attention back to Lex.

“This is a _farce_ ,” he informed Lex. “That _boy_ is not your soulmate.” Lex barely held back a wince. “Frankly, you’d be better off without one.” Lex clamped his lips down on a scream, rocked backwards and **shuddered**. “And--” he wheeled on Jonathan Kent, “I cannot _fathom_ what you think you stand to gain from this!” he challenged the man, and Lex could only look on in something like a ruthlessly suppressed screaming _panic_ as Jonathan Kent took his own stance and _looked down his nose at the man_.

“For one thing, not completely alienating my own son,” Jonathan Kent stated flatly. “Or my wife.”

Lex didn’t need to be a Luthor to know that that had been _exactly_ the wrong thing to say to his father. (Not after his mother…) It was pretty evident from the way that Lionel scoffed out “ _Your_ son,” right before his lips peeled back from his teeth and he leaned forward, getting right up into Jonathan Kent’s personal space and directly into his face.

“ _One phone call_ ,” were the three words that Lex’s father uttered at Clark’s own with casual and drawn-out slowness, and Jonathan Kent went white, then then red, just before his right fist clenched, and shook, and started to pull back, like he was about to--

“DON’T!” Lex yelled, tossing a hand across Jonathan’s chest and shoving him away -- backwards, away from his father, several steps -- forcefully. He didn’t even remember moving forward. Or letting go of Clark’s hand -- he’d used his left arm to get between them. He wasn’t on his own, though; he could feel Clark’s hand on his right shoulder, just _there_.

He was breathing hard. Jonathan still looked angry as hell. Lionel looked pleased.

Martha Kent was hovering at Jonathan’s left shoulder, with her eyes shooting daggers, looking anything _but_ ; her hand was placed almost the mirror position of where Clark was holding him. Support and restraint both, by the look of things.

“Don’t--” Lex breathed out shakily. “Just-- _don’t._ ” He wasn’t even sure who he was talking to at this point.

“Lex, we are leaving.” Lionel turned on his heel and began to walk away, ostensibly towards the front door.

Lex stared after him, blinked once, and then... continued to stare. It took him more than a moment to parse the order. It didn’t seem _real._

“No,” Lex said.

Lionel paused in his step. Stopped, and turned. “What did you say?”

“No.” And his voice should have shook saying it. Either time. Both. It didn’t, though.

Lionel tilted his head every so slightly, then back again. His eyes narrowed not at all.

“Lex,” he said, as though he were addressing an idiot, “What do you think you are doing?”

 _Defying you._ Something that he’d never done before. _Actively_ defying him, in front of enough other people that it might as well be considered in public. He was beyond scared; he was out far afield in new country. If it was just the two of them, in private, then maybe... But it wasn’t. This was nothing like that.

He was damning himself with silence.

Lionel regarded Lex more fully. “ _This,_ ” he gestured at Lex and Clark both, “is a mistake. It is bad judgment. You know this, son.”

He felt Clark shift at his back restively.

“--No, it isn’t,” Lex said quietly, somehow managing to look his father in the eye.

“You are going to come with me and undo this registration. _Now._ ”

Lex shook his head, a single jerk. His eyes never left Lionel’s.

“Lex.” A quiet voice. Still quiet.

He turned his head and looked over his shoulder, back at Clark.

Clark obviously wanted to help, but he didn’t know how.

Clark was helping, just by being there.

Lex met his eyes, raised a hand up to his shoulder, to cover Clark’s own, before he turned back to Lionel.

He barely caught the end of a flash of some expression. What little that registered, his subconscious instinct told him _wasn’t_ anything good.

“This is a lie,” Lionel told him succinctly, in that ‘you idiot’ of a tone. “It is a lie that you are _letting_ these people feed you. You are choosing, willfully, to live a lie.”

He felt Clark shudder through the contact. He wasn’t sure why, just that it disturbed him that Clark was disturbed, and it reignited at least some of his old anger with Lionel that he was the cause of it. Him, and his arrogance. And all of his unreasonable demands. And his so-called _games_. And his lack of any sort of affection to spare for him at all. And his... his... _bullying_.

He _hated_ bullies. It _killed_ him that he still loved his father. Why couldn’t he kill _that?_ Why couldn’t he stop? Just _stop?_

“Clark is my soulmate,” Lex told his father, as plainly as he could. “I’m **not** giving him up.” _Never._ “Not for you.” _Not for anything in this world, or the next._

Lionel stared at, and almost through him, like he was looking straight into the back of his skull. Then his father straightened to his full height, seeming to have come to some internal decision.

“If that is how it’s going to be..." Lionel said. And before Lex could respond, “Then it’s clear what I must do. I simply cannot trust you or your judgment anymore, Alexander,” he proclaimed heavily, as though he was a trial best rid of. As if he’d ever ‘trusted’ Lex’s ‘judgment’ in the first place, on anything at all. “And with your legal status now complicated by,” his gaze flickered back to Clark, then to him again, “all _this_ ,” as if it was somehow distasteful for him to have found and registered with his soulmate, as if people didn’t do just that every day, minors or fully-legal and of-age or otherwise, “You certainly aren’t useful to me anymore. Not in any capacity.”

Lex felt his eyes widen.

“You’re fired,” Lionel told him. “Effective immediately.”

It was all Lex could do not to wheeze out a laugh at this, and at Lionel’s retreating back as he turned away and continued towards the door, because this? _This_ was supposed to be a punishment? Not having to work at the plant in Smallville? Not having to work at _Luthorcorp?_ He’d never wanted that! That wasn’t a burden -- that was a _blessing!_ He--

“Oh, and consider yourself disowned,” Lionel Luthor called out casually over his shoulder, one hand on the door, as he pulled it open and walked out.

The door slammed shut.

“ _That--!!_ ” Jonathan all but exploded on the spot. Lex had other ideas.

Clark moved forward and wrapped his arms around him, caught him before he fell backwards, down, too far in any direction at all.

Not that he was entirely certain that his legs had given out. He’d just leaned backwards against Clark’s chest, mostly. He didn’t need Clark to keep him upright.

“I’m all right...” Lex heard himself tell Clark, sliding his own hands up Clark’s arms and back down them again. Stroking them. Comforting. Clark was worried. “Everything’s all right. Everything’s fine...” He took in a breath, and let it out again. And it was fine after all, wasn’t it? He was just... Lionel had just... It didn’t really matter, did it? Clark was his soulmate. Lionel was not. He didn’t need Lionel anymore, for anything.

“Luthor,” he heard Clark’s father intone, and he looked up at him.

And then he had to laugh. A short, quick, heady laugh, up at what Lex-- he wasn’t sure he was looking at. Was it more consternation, or was it concern? Or maybe something else entirely?

“It’s just..." He laughed again. “It’s not even a _surprise_ ,” he told Jonathan Kent, and heard his voice shift into the upper registers as he did so. He couldn’t stop himself -- not from sounding halfway to hysterical, and not from babbling it all out, trying haphazardly to explain. “Luthorcorp comes first with him. It _always_ comes first.” It had come first over his mother; it had come first before him. “So why _wouldn’t_ he fire me first?” He bit down hard on what promised to be escaping giggles, if he didn’t stop them. And he was on his own, now. He was on his own. He was on his own and he had Clark. He had Clark. He had Clark, and he was on his own.

He was coming off of an adrenaline rush like he couldn’t believe, forcing himself to suppress the shakes, and there was really no good way to try and talk to someone while doing that.

Clark led him over to the couch, past the empty laundry basket abandoned there. They both sat down, ostensibly next to each other. Martha was murmuring something to Jonathan behind them.

“Lex,” Clark said, and Lex just shook his head.

“I don’t want to talk right now, Clark,” he told his soulmate. “I’m just... tired.” He leaned his head against Clark’s right shoulder, sagged against the whole right side of his body. “I’m just tired. I need a minute, is all,” He closed his eyes. “But it’s going to be okay,” he reassured Clark. “Because..."

Clark slid his hand into Lex’s own. Right. _Exactly_.

His father didn’t know what he was talking about.

Lex breathed.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: ...Heeeeey, so, remember that first piece of Chapter 2? Which went a little something like this?
> 
>  
> 
> _His dad already didn't like Lex. And Clark hadn't even told his mom or dad that Lex had actually hit him with his car, yet. ... Telling his parents now would pretty much be the worst thing ever. ...if Clark told dad that he thought Lex Luthor was his soulmate, he'd never see Lex again. ... Clark really loved his mom and dad... But that didn't mean that he told them everything._
> 
>  
> 
> And remember in canon-canon, how (only) after Clark shoved his arm in that woodchipper and told Jonathan that Lex had hit him at over 60 MPH, completely freaked out and mad about being called ‘normal’ in passing by his father, was when Jonathan first told Clark that he was an alien? And how Clark’s response to this pronouncement was to _grin and laugh_ because he thought his dad couldn’t possibly be serious, and then to go on and jokingly ‘ask’ his dad about whether they had hidden ‘his spaceship’ in the farmhouse attic? ...Well, grinned and laughed up until his dad continued to be serious, and finally believed him after the big reveal in the storm cellar happened, anyway. (A bit different from what happened this time, eh? ...Oops? Though I do so love me some ‘for want of a nail’ sometimes :-D *innocent look*)
> 
> So yup! Completely clueless Clark (who doesn't (yet?) know he's an alien!). And completely horrified parents! On both sides of the Luthor-Kent divide. (Over entirely different secrets, of course.) And trying not to show it.
> 
> And then came the inevitable explosion-slash-conclusion.
> 
> ...Are we having fun yet?
> 
> *winks*
> 
> *evil, evil grin*


End file.
